Asian Dumpling Tips

Japanese Sweet Rice Dumplings with Brown Sugar Syrup Recipe (Shiratama Dango)

Though I'm finishing the manuscript for a new book, Asian Tofu, I still crave dumplings. After sending the last recipe chapter out for testing today, I went into the kitchen and made a new dumpling for fun. It's a Japanese favorite, made from sweet rice flour. Gluten-free, dairy-free, nutritious, easy, and very satisfying!

The poached dumplings are served with a thickened syrup, adzuki beans and some toasted soy flour. It may sound weird if you're not familiar with some of these ingredients but they work together marvelously. Check out the shiratama dango recipe on Viet World Kitchen!

Mochi Covered Dark Chocolate Truffles a la Betelnut

If you love dumplings and chocolate, this recipe is for you. Chefs Alexander Ong and Michael Siegel of Betelnut restaurant invited me for a lesson on how to make Siegel’s tasty creation, a mochi (sticky rice) wrapped dumpling that contains a filling of chocolate ganache. When I arrived at the San Francisco restaurant, Siegel was ready with all of his mis en place. We joked as he whisked, steamed, cut, and wrapped the dumplings. Siegel made it look so easy that for the first time, I felt like I could master Japanese wagashi-style confections and teach others too as well.

I had invited my dear friend Carolyn Jung of Foodgal.com to join us that afternoon, but I hadn’t fully explained what Siegel’s mochi dumpling was about. Carolyn had to squeeze our get together into her schedule, and when she arrived at Betelnut and discovered that the dumplings contained chocolate, she nearly exploded with glee.

“You didn’t tell me that he put CHOCOLATE into them!” she said. Oh. I told her they were truffle dumplings but the dumpling part got more to me and I overlooked the chocolate attraction to her!

When Carolyn tasted Siegel’s trio of mochi dumplings, she could barely contain herself to share them with the rest of us. I turned away for a few moments and when I returned my gaze to the mochi plate, it was empty.

Vegetarian Daikon Rice Cakes a la Slanted Door Recipe (Luo Bo Gao)

 

To test drive Wai Chu’s recipe for Chinese daikon radish cakes, I bought a lot of daikon radish. You never know how much you’ll need and I didn’t want to keep running back to the store. Wai’s luóbo gāo (lok bok gow in Cantonese,  蘿蔔糕) from The Dumpling cookbook worked out like a charm on the first run-through so I had several pounds of leftover radish, some of which were used for Vietnamese daikon and radish pickles (do chua) that I’ll be stuffing into banh mi sandwiches.

Watching Charles Phan compete against Cat Cora on Iron Chef America's battle almond got me thinking about Slanted Door’s vegetarian version of the daikon radish cakes. I recalled Phan proudly telling me in an interview how he infused a lot of umami into the cakes so that people wouldn’t miss the traditional dried shrimp and Chinese sausage. The Vietnamese cooks at Slanted Door who are in charge of the radish cakes said that it’s a perennial favorite; they should know as they’ve worked with Phan for many years. In tribute to Phan and his hardworking staff,  I decided to take Wai's recipe and make it vegetarian.

Vietnamese Rice and Pork Pyramid Dumplings Recipe (Banh Gio)

 If you’re enamored by dumplings at all, you probably have a list of comforting favorites. I’m partial to this Vietnamese dumpling wrapped in banana leaf as it was part of my childhood. My mother prepared dozens of these northern Vietnamese bánh giò (“baan zaw”) for our family to enjoy for breakfast or an afternoon snack. Commonly found at Vietnamese delis and sandwich shops, these dumplings are best when made at home and eaten fresh from the steamer, when they are soft and redolent of the tealike fragrance of the banana leaf wrapper. Inside, the firmish-soft rice dough encases a savory pork, shallot, and wood ear mushroom.

After my siblings and I left home for college, my mother stopped making them on a regular basis. I missed them dearly and last month, I put in a request for a batch and a lesson. She obliged and the recipe and video below showcase her nifty Viet-American technique that involves banana leaf (traditional) with aluminum foil (New World). It’s totally simple to master, even for novices. 

Zongzi Wrapping Lesson from a Master

This Thursday, May 28 is the fifth day of the fifth moon according the Lunar Calendar. On that day, a good billion plus people around the world will be celebrating Duānwǔ Jié (端午節), a Chinese holiday that’s also known as the Double Fifth Festival in China and the Dragon Boat Festival in the West. What’s the deal with dragon boats? The story is that the holiday commemorates the drowning suicide death of Qu Yuan, a poet, scholar, and minister to the King of Chu in 278 BCE. A man willing to sacrifice his own life for the sake of his moral convictions, Qu was banished for treason when the king allied with a rival warlord. When the rival warlord over took the Chu state, Qu threw himself into the Miluo River in Hunan province.

The local people admired Qu so much that they attempted to preserve his body by throwing food into the river to distract the fish from eating his corpse. This is how the practice of making zòngzi , a.k.a. Chinese tamales, began. You have to paddle dragon boats out into the river and then throw the bamboo-leaf wrapped dumplings into the water. Pyramid-like zòngzi, made primarily of sticky rice and either a sweet or savory filling, becomes very heavy and hearty after its hours boiling so they’re bound to keep the fish busy for a while.

Chinese Steamed Pearl Balls Recipe (Zhenzhu Qiu)

It has been about 20 years since I made Chinese steamed pearl balls (you may giggle at the name, but it is the literal translation of the Chinese characters: 珍 珠 球, zhēnzhū qiú) and I had forgotten how deliciously easy these Asian dumplings are. Zhēnzhū qiú hail from Shanghai and are sometimes served as a first course at banquets in Beijing, according to Chinese food expert Eileen Yin-fei Low. But I like to eat them along with Cantonese dim sum favorites. Pearl balls seem to fit in well, and Cantonese dim sum these days includes preparations from many parts of China. When my husband tried the pearl balls, he deemed them the perfect substitute for the typical Swedish meatballs served as cocktail fare. In fact, he was sipping on rose while enjoying zhēnzhū qiú, dipped in soy sauce and chile garlic sauce.

For these Asian dumplings, a fragrant pork mixture is shaped into meatballs, then coated in soaked sticky rice (a.k.a. glutinous/sweet rice) and then steamed. The pork mixture for pearl balls is purposefully made to be very soft to ensure succulence. It’s sticky and to make them easier to work with, I freeze the meatballs to firm them up before coating them in the rice. During cooking, a translucent skin forms as the sticky rice grains expand and cohere. They also absorb the richness and flavor of the pork. As for the pearly resemblance, the entire cooked dumpling glistens with a certain pinkish cast like a giant pearl, and you could say that the rice grains resemble tiny seed pearls. You can’t eat pearls but you can certainly enjoy many of steamed pearl balls.