Sunday, March 15, 2009

Making food is hard... to... do


With all of the street food I've been eating I fear I may start to get fat before much longer. A colleague of mine even said my face already shows some signs of added weight. So I figured I should try my hand at some home cooking.

After eating these really delicious rice and chicken filled dumplings in the street shops I decided I'd try making them myself - though I had no recipe.

I made rice, mixed in some fried chicken,








...and used flour and water to make dough and wrappers like I would for regular 饺子.




















My kitchen hardware does not include a rack to steam things on, so I had to jerry-rig a steamer by placing some chopsticks in a pot of water and suspending a plate of the dumplings over the boiling water. In the process of steaming, the water in the pot completely evaporated and the chopsticks got a little charred - fortunately I wasn't using any of the chopsticks I brought with me, only the ones left over by the last tenant.


The dumplings I made weren't like the ones on the street, for one thing the dough I used resulted in a thick cover - also the filling I used did not have as much sauce, so the taste wasn't as strong. Good news was I could eat the filling with or without being steamed (or boiled as I later tried) in a wrap of dough.

1 comment:

InMay said...

As a foreigner,i have to c,you r really handy.I wonder if somebody had told u that we use pork ,instead of chicken,to make dumplings.What's more,u dont need to make the covers of dumplings yourself,they r avilable in shops,making by machince,all thin and in good shape.we wrape one dumpling once in one cover,never try to finish the work in that childish way(it's like making a sandwich!).One cover,the filling,another cover---no!!
One cover in your palm,then the filling right in the middle of the cover(not too much or too less),use a chopsticks touch a bowl of water,leave some water on the edge of the cover when you chopsticks circle the edge .it's sticky now and press(here is a little complex).at last,we stream dumlings as well as boil them in water.throw the dumplings in ,when water is boiling ,they will float.and time to release you stomach