Asian Dumpling Tips

What Recipe Should I Start with in Asian Dumplings?

Several people asked me that question last week after they perused the Asian Dumplings cookbook. Here are my tips for getting started:

1. Before setting out on your Asian dumpling adventure, check your pantry to make sure you have the basic ingredients for making Asian dumplings.  At the least, be sure to have some all-purpose flour on hand. The regular kind from the supermarket works best. None of that fancy high-gluten stuff for rustic, chewy bread making! In general, unbleached all-purpose flour is better for savory dumplings and bleached all-purpose is preferred for sweet dumplings. See the sidebar on page 9 for an Asian dumpling pantry listing and use the glossary of ingredients to help you buy Asian ingredients. The photo on Page 14 includes the major flours and starches employed in Asian Dumplings. You can also review my post on how to build an Asian dumpling pantry.

2. Make sure you have the essential cooking equipment handy. See the discussion beginning on page 5. (Hint: The little rolling pin and a scale are extremely handy!)

Slanted Door's Hue Rice Dumplings Recipe (Banh Xep Chay)

I know you’ll think me crazy, but to mark the release of Asian Dumplings  this week, I made a new dumpling. It’s one that I can’t get out of my mind. Every time I've ordered the Hue rice dumplings at Charles Phan’s Slanted Door restaurant in San Francisco, I’m tickled by their dainty appearance and rich mung bean and caramelized shallot flavor. The garnish of rich scallion oil and spicy soy sauce imparts extra plush and savory qualities. The dumplings are slightly chewy and soft and a bit translucent, a result of the wrapper being made from rice flour and tapioca starch. Slanted Door names these morsels Hue rice dumplings as they are similar to a tapioca-based Hue dumpling called banh bot loc, a classic dumpling from the central region of Vietnam, which many associate with the former imperial city of Hue. (For a banh bot loc recipe, see Asian Dumplings, page 147).

But the restaurant’s dumpling is actually more akin to a rice and tapioca starch dumpling called banh xep ("baan sehp"), which literally means “folded dumpling,” or turnover. Semantics aside, the Slanted Door’s rice dumpling is a delicious Vietnamese and vegan snack. Meat lovers won't feel shorted whatsoever.

Asian Dumplings Cookbook Hits Shelves Today!

Hallelujah! The wait is finally over. I'm thrilled to bits to announce that Asian Dumplings hit the shelves today! Where are the books sold? As my publisher Ten Speed Press loves to say, "Wherever books are sold!" That means your independent brick-and-mortar bookstore as well as retailers like Borders, Barnes and Nobles,  Amazon and Jessica's Biscuit.

If you've not checked out the book, here are helpful links:

• Press Release
• Sneak Peek inside Asian Dumplings
• Advance Reviews

Thanks for your support! Now it's time to get doughy. Go out and eat dumplings and come home to make some too!

Finding Great Asian Dumplings in Los Angeles

Just because I provided a listing of Chinese dumpling shops in the San Gabriel Valley does not mean that that’s where all the great Asian dumplings are in Los Angeles. The wealth of ethnic eats in Los Angeles means that there are well-crafted dumplings all over the place. With exception to Chinese dumpling joints, other Asian cuisines mostly commingle their dumplings offerings with other items on a bigger menu. For example, noodles often go with dumplings. Expand your Asian dumpling horizon at these spots:

All Family Restaurant (1032 Crenshaw Blvd., #B, Los Angeles)
Drive too fast as you speed from the 10 freeway toward Koreatown central and you’ll miss this little gem of a Korean dumpling and noodle shop. Very little English is spoken but the service is cordial. The tight, bilingual menu of handmade dumplings and noodles is a wonderful way to experience Korean doughy craftsmanship. There’s mandu soup delicately garnished with nori seaweed, carrot, egg shreds, and scallion. The graceful dumplings are pretty and thoughtfully fashioned from pre-made skins, which I spied boxes of near the kitchen. Korean mandu take on a variety of shapes, and one of which is triangular and resembles Napoleon’s hat. Kimchi mandu is extra nice and flavorful here. If you like All Family’s dumplings, take home a bag of frozen ones.

Favorite Dumpling Restaurants in the San Gabriel Valley

If you want good Asian food nowadays you often have to trek to the suburbs. Asian enclaves are no longer built around urban ghettos, but rather on the outskirts of city centers – in the burroughs and burbs where there’s more space and opportunity for establishing viable communities. Such is the case with the San Gabriel Valley, located east of downtown Los Angeles. I love Chinatown, L.A., for the hearty pot stickers at the Mandarin Deli (which is now closed!) but to explore a broader swathe of Chinese dumplings, I head eastward on the 10 freeway into cities like Monterey Park and Baldwin Hills and El Monte where many Hong Kong and Taiwanese Chinese immigrants have settled and prospered, where they demand and get fabulous food.

I did a fair amount of research for this book by eating dumplings and whenever possible, watching dumpling masters. That truly helped me replicate the flavor and cooking and wrapping techniques. If you’re in the Los Angeles area, you can too. For Chinese dumplings (I’ll leave dim sum for another occasion), get in the car and head to the San Gabriel Valley. Over the course of several dumpling crawls with friends and professionals such as Chinese food expert Carl Chu, author of Chinese Food Finder. Here are some standout dumpling shops:

Asian Dumplings Cookbook Giveaway!

Leite's Culinaria, a terrific and professionally run food site, is giving a way a free copy of the Asian Dumplings cookbook. Enter by the deadline: September 15, 2009 -- midnight!

To enter, visit this page:

http://leitesculinaria.com/19462/giveaways-asian-dumplings.html

Good luck!

Japanese Octopus Dumpling Balls Recipe (Takoyaki)

Let me just say this upfront: Many dumplings are spherical in shape and can only be described as balls. Go ahead and giggle like I did during the four-day Asian Dumplings photo shoot when photographer Penny De Los Santos repeatedly said “balls” to break up the tension. But seriously, round shaped dumplings have a large presence in the Asian dumpling repertoire. Consider classic Asian dumplings such as fried Chinese sesame balls (jin duei) and Indian gulab jamum (once referred to in a recipe as cakey balls). I’ll stop with the innuendos.

What got me hooked on making Japanese takoyaki is not their shape, nor the fact that their name literally means octopus balls, reflecting that they are traditionally filled with chunks of cooked octopus. Takoyaki resemble French profiteroles but they combine an unusual array of savory ingredients  – dashi stock hydrates the wheat flour batter, the filling includes raw, cooked, and pickled items, and garnishes comprise mayonnaise, seaweed, shaved bonito flakes and tonkatsu sauce, which tastes like Worcestershire sauce. All of these seemingly disparate ingredients give donut-like takoyaki a savory, rich, tangy, sea-like taste. These dumplings remind me of Japan’s quirky culture and its penchant for building layer upon layer of subtlety to create wonderful foods.

Easy Way to Pipe Sauces and Frostings

I employ this nifty method whenever I need to quickly garnish or decorate foods with thick sauces and frostings. For Japanese takoyaki dumplings, I use this method to squeeze out lines of mayonnaise to garnish the dumplings before serving.

Regardless of what you’re squeezing, use a freezer zip-top plastic bag as a makeshift pastry bag and nozzle. Put your squeezable ingredient in a corner of the bag. To fashion the pastry bag tip, snip a small hole – a scant 1/4 inch wide – at the corner so you can squirt the sauce or frosting out.

Go ahead and squeeze and you should get thin lines. Practice on a flat surface if you've never used a pastry bag before. Below are photos of this nifty method as applied to mayonnaise:

When using this method for decorating a cake, cupcake, or cookie, the lines will not be smooth and pretty as what you see in a bakery. If you’re going for perfection, put decorative pastry tip in the corner of the bag.