Pot Sticker - 鍋貼/餃子

The Nielsons were in town this weekend and we made pot tickers one evening. Yummy!
Try this recipe at you own rick since I do not have exact measurements of seasonings and no good instructions. It's better to come to our house and learn by "live demonstration", so give us a call and come make some pot stickers with us!

1 head of cabbage
1 lb of ground pork or ground turkey
Pot sticker/Gyoza skin
salt
soy sauce
sesame oil

Cut the cabbage into 6 sections and chop in the food processor (I have a Cuisinart Prep 11 Plus) one section at a time. Use pulse so the cabbage does not turn into cabbage soup. Salt the chopped cabbage and let stand for 20-30 minutes. Squeeze the water from the cabbage with a cloth; 1/2 - 3/4 cup of cabbage at a time. Mix the dry cabbage with ground meat, add the seasonings and mix well together and you are ready to make pot stickers.

The wrapping part is where you have to come see the demo; I don't think I can explain. I promise that if my friend Chris and I get together to make pot stickers again, I'll take lots of photos and update this blog with detailed instructions!

Misc information: 
If the dumpling is boiled, it's called 餃子 (jiaozi) or 水餃 (shuǐjiǎo); if the dumpling is pan fried as the picture shown above, it's called 鍋貼 (guōtiē) or 煎餃 (jiānjiǎo); if the dumpling is steamed, it called 蒸餃 (zhēngjiǎo). Dumplings are one of the major foods eaten during the Chinese New Year, and year round in the northern provinces. They look like the golden ingots yuan bao used during the Ming Dynasty for money and the name sounds like the word for the earliest paper money, so serving them brings the promise of wealth, good luck and prosperity. Many families eat these at midnight on Chinese New Year's Eve so they have money at the changing of the years. Some cooks will even hide a clean coin in one for the most lucky to find. According to legend, the pan-fried pot stickers were invented when a royal chef accidentally left a pot of dumpling on the stove too long and burned the bottoms. Undaunted, he served the dumplings anyway and a new dish was born! 
He must not burned the bottom of the dumpling too badly. When I burn something, it's burned; not usually fit to be consumed a food!

Summertime Succotach - lima beans and corn

This is a dish from the book The Kind Diet by Alicia Silverstone and I was pleasantly surprised the first time I tasted it. I must confess that I had not been big fan of lima beans for a long time. When we first moved to the states, my mother used lima beans in place of fresh soy beans in a recipe because they looked almost identical (back then fresh soy beans were impossible to find). My prejudice against lima bean was formed when I was expecting fresh soy beans and got a mouthful of lime beans instead. Never the less, I love the idea of lima beans because of the book A Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon (see the end of the blog entry). I loved the story and the fun illustration and used to read it to my kids all the time.

1 tablespoon Earth Balance butter (I often skipped this ingredient and just use the olive oil because I'm too lazy to get it out of the fridge)
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 cup diced red inion
1 garlic clove, minced
1 (10 oz) package frozen baby lima beans, thawed
1 cup fresh or frozen corn
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
1 tablespoon white or red balsamic vinegar (I definitely like the white balsamic better)

Heat the butter and oil together in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion, and saute for 5 to 7 minutes or until the onion begins to brown. Add the garlic, and cook 1 minute longer. Stir in the lima beans, and saute for 5 minutes. Add the corn and tomatoes, and saute 1 minute longer or until just heated through. Remove from the hear, and stir in the parsley, basil, and vinegar. Serve warm or chilled.

There is a young girl in the book that likes lima beans...but she doesn't want her friends to know that she likes them...(she worries what others might think of her)...so she stops eating lima beans in order to be like everyone else...and she starts getting stripes and all sorts of patterns and colors all over her body...read it to find out what happens in the end...

Stir-fry sauce

Here are a couple of sauces that I always have on hand for making stir-fry dishes. I keep them in the fridge in empty Briannas' salad dressing glass bottles; the recipes have been modified to fit in the 12 oz container. The brown sauces can be very versatile; it can be used for stir-fry as is or you can add other ingredients like plum sauce, ketchup, or black bean sauce to make some totally different dishes. Sometimes I even use the brown sauce as dipping sauce for pot stickers and the teriyaki sauce for dipping tempura (after thinning it some by adding water).  I prefer using fresh garlic and ginger and always have some garlic in my spice cupboard and a piece of ginger in the fridge or freezer. Ginger can keep in the fridge for a while but if you can't use it up fast enough, just put it in a zip-lock bag and put it in the freezer. I sometimes grate the ginger when it is still pretty frozen. There are a couple of indispensable tools that I use all the time if a recipe calls for minced garlic or powder ginger.  One tool is the Microplane stainless steel zester; I use it to grate lemon/lime zest or ginger. The other one is a Kuhn Rikon stainless steel garlic press; it cost me dearly but it is easy to use and easy to clearn. Plus, I hate the cheep one at the grocery store that don't work well or I manage to break them (I have broken two OXO garlic press). Did I also mention that I don't like to chop garlic by hand? I don't like my fingers to smell like garlic.

Brown Sauce
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup broth or water
1/8 teaspoon garlic, minced
1/8 teaspoon ginger, minced
1 oz cooking sherry or replace it with broth or water
1/2 tablespoon sugar
1/2 tablespoon vinegar
The original recipe also had 1/2 tablespoon of accent (MSG) but I never use it.

Teriyaki Sauce
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/3 cup dry sherry or replace it with broth or water
1/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/4 cup vinegar
2 Tablespoon of vegetable oil
1 clove of garlic, minced
1/2 t ground ginger

Honey Walnut Prawns - 核桃蝦

The first time I had walnut shrimp was when I went to visit my friends the Nielsons in 1995 or 1999 while they still lived in the Bay area. We went to a Chinese restaurant together and the food was so good. I ordered it in several restaurants in the Salt Lake area but it was never nearly as good. Finally I decided to do my research on the internet and see if I can come up with something better to serve in one of our annual Chinese New Year dinner. I eventually bought a deep fryer just for this dish because it works great for the walnuts and the shrimp. I also have some fond memories of helping my mother making candied walnuts in her little kitchen in Taipei. I don't remember what she was using the candied walnuts for but I sure remembered that they were yummy. I think I used to help her in the kitchen not because I was a helpful person but it was a great way to do some food sampling. The walnuts does take some time so I usually make it a couple of days in advance. The last time I made a batch of the candied walnuts, I had to hide them from my family or else they would be all gone before I get around to make the shimp.

Shrimp:

1 lb of large or medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
a dash of salt
1/4 cup corn starch
1 egg white
1 cup oil

Sauce:
2 Tbs honey
3 Tbs mayonnaise
1 1/2 Tbs fresh lemon juice
1 tsp of fresh lime juice
1 Tbs condensed milk

Preparation:
Shrimp:
Mix cornstarch and egg whites together to from a think sticky texture and mix well with shrimp with a dash of salt. Set aside.
Sauce:
Mix honey, mayonnaise, lemon juice, lime juice, and condensed milk in a bowl until smooth.

Heat the oil in wok until hot and deep fry the shrimp until golden; drain the oil and fold in the honey mayonnaise mixture into shrimp. Mix well, sprinkle with candied walnuts and arrange on platter. Usually the shrimp is served over lightly stir fried or steamed vegetables like broccoli or Napa cabbage.

Candied Walnuts
1/2 cup walnuts
2 cups water
1/8 cup sugar, use 1/4 or 1/3 cup if you like more sugary walnuts
2 cups oil

Rinse walnuts; boil in 2 cups of water and continually changing water until water is clear. Drain water from walnuts and boil with sugar until sugar dissolved. Heat 2 cups of oil until almost smoking and deep fry walnuts until they are shiny and brown, no longer tan/golden; about 3 minutes. Place walnuts on cookie sheet, let cool.

The Vegetarian Burger

This is a recipe from my friend Lynell. It dated back to 1990's. We used to have it quite often until Kimberly protested very loudly that she had enough of "vegetarian" meals, "fake" cheese, "pretend" burgers, or anything that had the "organic" wording on the package. We were never vegetarians, but were trying to eat meat sparingly. Back then Cassidy was allergic to milk and soy, so for a few years we did not eat anything that had milk, soy, nor anything that had milk product in it. That was a pretty tough thing to do ten or twelve years ago since there were not as many alternative products out there and organic food was not as common. Maybe that was why Kimberly hated the restriction so much. I have been thinking about this recipe lately because Roland and I actually like the vege-burger a lot. I just make a batch today and am excited to let Kimberly try it again now that her taste buds are more interested in healthy food.

Ingredients:
2 eggs or 1/2 C soaked garbanzo beans blended well with 1/2 C water
1 C rolled oats, uncooked; I like to blend 2/3 of rolled oats for a few seconds in a blender, this helps the mixture to stick together better.
1 C finely chopped walnuts or use 1/2 cup chopped sunflower seeds and 1/2 cup walnuts
1 medium onion minced; I like it lightly sautéed
4 table spoon of milk; or rice milk
1/2 tea spoon of salt
1 tea spoon of sage (powder)
1 table spoon of soy sauce; I use 1 1/2 table spoon of soy sauce

Lynelle like the mixture thin so she can pour it onto a electric grill like pancake batter. I like the mixture thicker and I form it into patties and pan fry with a little olive oil until it's golden brown. It makes about 8 vege-burger patties.