Asian Dumpling Tips

DIY Asian Wooden Dowel Rolling Pin

If you’re going to embark on making Asian dumplings, one of the most important tools to have is a skinny light rolling pin. Don’t think you can use a regular Western pastry rolling pin to roll out dumpling wrappers for Japanese gyoza, Shanghai soup dumplings, Tibetan momos and Indian samosas. It’s really cumbersome to use a large rolling pin to individually form thin 3 inch round wrappers. Take a look at the video for how to roll out Asian dumpling wrappers to see the skinny rolling pin in action.  The Asian rolling pins are nothing but a 12-inch length of wooden dowel. They’re sold at many Chinese house ware and restaurant supply shops for about $3 each. But you don’t need to venture to one of those shops to get one. Make the rolling pin yourself.

How to Put a Crisp Skirt on Pot Stickers

It’s hard to believe that it just over a week ago that I came back from Australia obsessed with figuring out how to replicate a particular style of pot stickers that I enjoyed at Hutong dumpling restaurant in Melbourne. As I noted, Hutong’s pot stickers were united on their plate by what could only be described as a crisp skirt. I asked for help to answer this question -- How to produce that little skirt at home? A number of people came to my immediate rescue.

Robyn Laing from New Zealand translated a gyoza recipe from Gyoza no Daigasshou (Gyoza Grand Chorus) cookbook, scanned in the pages from the book, then sent the pdfs to me. I’d asked about the origin of the skirt and Robyn noted that the skirt recipe in the cookbook came from Chef Yagi:

Chef Yagi was born in China where his parents ran a restaurant. He stayed in China after the war but returned to Japan in 1979. To learn Japanese he invited friends over and made gyoza for them the way he'd had them in China. He went to cooking school and worked in a number of Chinese restaurants to learn the trade. This led to him starting a small restaurant and gradually expanded his business. It suggests that he came up with the idea of the skirt as a way differentiating his gyoza. So no way of telling whether this was an idea he adapted from China or from Japan.

Recipe Tester Candy Grover’s Summer of Dumplings

I’m blessed to have had a wonderful team of recipe testers for the Asian Dumplings cookbook. They were all volunteers, some of whom I’ve been friends with for years while others I’ve only corresponded with via email and chatted with on the phone. Candy Grover of Bloomington, Indiana, was among my virtual testers. An avid cook who does Slow Food, Chowhound and the likes, she stepped up to the plate and volunteered to recipe test on whatever next book I was writing. “Great,” I said. “How about some Asian dumplings?”

During the 2008 summer months of testing, Candy worked diligently on her assigned recipes and reported back with insights to help me polish the instructions. Living in the Midwest, Candy’s experience and perspective were just what I needed to ensure that the recipe collection appealed to and worked for a broad audience.  (Passing the test of recipe testers is the a major hurdle in writing a cookbook manuscript!) An avid and curious cook, she was so bowled over by the techniques and results that she enthusiastically shared her new found knowledge with friends, including the Bloomington Herald-Times food journalist Cindy Bradley. Both were very keen on writing about Candy’s experience and Cindy authored the article below, which was published in the October 21st edition of the Bloomington, IN, Herald-Times newspaper:

Reprinted with permission from Cindy Bradley.

Dumplings to Die For

By Cindy Bradley
email: cbradley_at_heraldt.com
October 21, 2009

Back in the spring of 2008, my friend Candy Grover and I were both cooking from Andrea Nguyen’s “Into the Vietnamese Kitchen.”  (The two of us are huge fans of Vietnamese cuisine, and continue to lament the fact that Bloomington lacks a Vietnamese restaurant.)

We were having fun exchanging tastes and tips, producing delicious dishes along the way.  I was unfamiliar with an ingredient in one of the dishes, so I called Candy up and she, too, was stumped.  Somehow, she managed to track down the author’s email address, and went straight to the source.

Asian Dumplings Cookbook Errata

No matter how many times and how many people review a book manuscript, there's something that slips by.  For that reason, it's normal for authors and editors to compile a list of errata -- a late 16th, early 17th century word for errors that's commonly used in publishing. Errata are corrected for in the next printing of a book. It's come to my attention that the following errata are in the Asian Dumplings cookbook:

In the "Thin Skins" chapter, there are incorrect page references. Check the ingredient listing for the spring roll and lumpia recipes and you'll see that the current page listing for the skins themselves   points to Cantonese Spring Roll Skins on page 64, not the Shanghai Spring Roll Skin recipe on page 81.  At least we were consistently incorrect!  To recap: 

• page 84: 18 to 20 Shanghai Spring Roll Skins (page 64 81)
• page 87: 18 to 20 Shanghai Spring Roll Skins (page 64 81)

I misspelled one of my recipe tester's surnames in the Acknowledgments. Candy (Candace) Moyer Grover pointed it out to me with good humor, saying that she'd been elevated to being Bill Moyer's spouse! Lo siento. Mea culpa. Thanks for giving me a pass, Candy.

Whether in print or online, my policy is to be upfront and transparent to readers. Ten Speed Press will be making adjustments in the next printing of the book, but until then, do note the changes in your copies of Asian Dumplings!

Help! Mysterious Pot Stickers with a Crisp Skirt

As I understand them, pot stickers resulted from a delectable mistake made by a Chinese cook who left his dumplings poaching unattended and all the water boiled out of the wok (guo), making the dumplings stick (tie). So the Asian dumplings are technically wok stickers (guo tie) but in English, we know them as pot stickers. I thought that that was the story, but last week in Sydney, my dear friend Christopher Tan, a Singapore-based food writer and Asian pastry expert told me about a type of pot sticker that I’d not heard of or seen.

“The cook pours on a thin layer of batter into the skillet as the pot stickers pan-fry. When they are done, there is a crisp layer that comes out with all the dumplings,” Chris told me in his lilting, slightly gravelly Singaporean accent. I kind of understood what he was talking about and thought it was a novel trick and extended play on the concept of a pot sticker.

Dumplings in Down Under Australia

If you are humming “Land Down Under,” the Men at Work song from the 1980s (ouch! I just dated myself), it’s quite apropos to dumplings as the song and video are rather food centric (e.g.,Vegemite, breakfast, the bar shot that kicks off the video). On my first day in Sydney, I headed down to Chinatown, a short walk from the Hilton hotel where I was staying, and there was a wealth of dumplings to be found, including: Din Tai Fung for Shanghai soup dumplings, three Uighur restaurants offering various samsas (like a baked turnover), a sparkling clean Da Niang Dumpling shop that sold boiled Northern Chinese poached and panfried dumplings along with great side dishes. Mother Chu’s Taiwanese café had ladies showing off their bao pleating skills at the front window.

And that’s not counting the dim sum houses, which are called “Yum Cha” in Australia. At chic, gentrified Billy Kwong restaurant in Surry Hills, an establishment owned by celebrity chef and author Kylie Kwong, I found fried and poached wontons made from skins prepared in-house. At the Chat Thai cafe, I got a takeaway order of sweet saku tapioca dumplings (in green and white colors) to eat in my hotel room. I checked markets such as Thai Kee in Chinatown’s Paddy’s Market and even the local skins looked remarkably fresh.

The Trick to Making Bao – Los Angeles Times article

I’ve been fascinated with Chinese buns (bao) for years, and when I was writing the “Stuffed Buns” chapter of Asian Dumplings, I wanted to pen a much longer piece on the hows and whys of bao. I know it sounds crazy but I’m a geek over Asian dough. Truth be told, I’ve struggled with bao dough for a long time and finally found a solution for wonderful dough that hasn’t failed me. It doesn’t collapse during cooking, is resilient yet soft, and has the sweet goodness of wheat.

I told Russ Parsons, editor of the Los Angeles Times “Food Section,” about my doughy adventure and discovery and he resoundingly said “yes!” to an article on bao. I’ve experimented lots over the years, and even tested out flour bought at Chinese markets and overseas. The photo at the top of this page is from one round of experimentation where I made five bao dough from five different kinds of flour.

Asian Dumplings Featured in Cooking Light

My friend Penny Rich alerted me a couple weeks back that the Asian Dumplings cookbook was selected by the editors of Cooking Light magazine for the October 2009 “Editor’s Dozen” column. I looked all over Santa Cruz – at Whole Foods, Rite-Aid, Safeway, and Bookshop Santa Cruz -- for the issue but only saw the September one with the pizza cover. For a few days, I thought that Penny was perhaps mistaken but last week, Cathy Danh of Gastronomy blog tweeted that she saw the issue and spotlight on my book.

So last Saturday, I went to a San Jose Border’s and indeed found the newly released October issue with the braised beef and vegetables on the cover. Inside, on page 18 was my book – listed as #3 on their list of twelve monthly picks. WOW. Here’s a close up of what they wrote:

I’m so jazzed because with every monthly issue, Cooking Light reaches nearly 2 million readers whose interests span the culinary landscape. To think that Asian dumplings have such broad appeal validates not just my work, but the history and culture behind dumplings themselves. Coincidentally, the October issue also includes a lengthy feature containing noodle recipes from around the world. Asian dumplings and noodles go hand in hand. A perfect pairing.