Barracuda Law

Posted By The Barracuda on March 17, 2010

The 2010 March Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Eleanor of MelbournefoodGeek and Jess of Jessthebaker. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make risotto. The various components of their challenge recipe are based on input from the Australian Masterchef cookbook and the cookbook Moorish by Greg Malouf.

What can I say?  The whole posting on time thing?  Apparently not for me.  That just wouldn’t be the barracuda way, frankly, and I’m a little offended that you’ve suggested it.

Now that I’ve gotten the unpleasantness out of the way, I can get to the risotto.  The yummy, yummy risotto.  My half-Korean husband was a little bit appalled at what I was planning to do to rice (rice! have you no respect?!), but he came around when he got the first whiff.  As good as this tasted, the smell was 100 times better.  I’d seriously consider making it just to make the kitchen smell fantastic.

For the broth, you need:

1 large chicken 2-3 pounds about 1 kg
chicken bones 2-3 pounds 1 kg
2 onions, roughly diced
1 medium leek - white part only, roughly diced
2 sticks celery, roughly diced
2 cloves garlic, halved
1 cinnamon stick
1 tsp. white peppercorns ( Any type of whole peppercorn will do)
2 bay leaves (fresh or dried, it doesn’t matter.)
peel of 1/2 lemon
1/4 tsp. allspice

1. Wash the chicken and bones and places in a 5 Litre pot, cover completely with water and bring to a boil
2. Skim away any scum as it comes to the surface
3. Add the vegetables and bring back to a boil
4. Add the rest remaining ingredients and simmer very gently, uncovered for 1.5 hours
5. Carefully lift out the chicken, set aside.
6. Simmer the stock gently for another hour. At , at the end you should have around 2 Liters
7. Carefully ladle the liquid into a fine sieve, the less the bones and vegetables are disturbed in this process the clearer the stock will be. 
The stock is now ready for use.

I forgot the allspice!  Who knew?!  Not me, until right this minute.  Ah well, it came together decently regardless.  And I didn’t have chicken bones, so I threw in a few more pieces of chicken.  Which was good,  because when we were really hungry around 8, and the risotto wasn’t finished yet, we had plenty of what I like to refer to as “snackin’ chicken”.

Good stuff.

For the risotto base:

olive oil 2 fluid oz 60 ml
1 small onion, quatered
rice 14 oz 400g
white wine 2 fl oz 60 ml
chicken or vegetable stock , simmering 2 pints 1 L

1. Heat oil in a pan and add onion. Fry for a few minutes to flavour the oil then discard.
2. Add the rice and stir for a few minutes to coat each grain of rice with oil and toast slightly.
3. Add the wine and let it bubble away until evaporated.
4. Add enough stock to cover the rice by a finger’s width (about an inch or two).
5. Cook on medium heat, stirring with a wooden spoon from time to time, until most of the stock has been absorbed.
6. Repeat Step 5 making sure to leave aside approximately 100 ml. of stock for the final step.

As for the risotto itself, I went for a bastardized version of the preserved lemon option, just using the zest of 1 lemon, a bunch of parmesan cheese, and enough butter to make my arteries still hurt.  So, so tasty.   And decent for lunch the next day too, although I felt positively unhealthy to have it twice in two days.  Ah, the sacrifices I make.

This was tons of fun!  Thank you Eleanor and Jess!

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Posted By The Barracuda on January 31, 2010

The January 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Lauren of Celiac Teen. Lauren chose Gluten-Free Graham Wafers and Nanaimo Bars as the challenge for the month. The sources she based her recipe on are 101 Cookbooks and www.nanaimo.ca.

Well.  This was an interesting challenge - I loved the idea of making graham crackers, and the nanaimo bars sounded heavenly.   It didn’t turn out quite that nice, unfortunately (100% our fault - the recipes were fantastic).  The graham crackers came first:

Graham Crackers

Ingredients:

1 cup Sweet rice flour (also known as glutinous rice flour)
3/4 cup Tapioca Starch/Flour
1/2 cup Sorghum Flour
1 cup Dark Brown Sugar, Lightly packed
1 teaspoon Baking soda
3/4 teaspoon Kosher Salt
7 tablespoons Unsalted Butter (Cut into 1-inch cubes and frozen)
1/3 cup Honey, Mild-flavoured such as clover.
5 tablespoons Whole Milk
2 tablespoons Pure Vanilla Extract

We went the regular flour way and used 2.5 cups plus 2 tablespoons of all-purpose flour.  For some reason, the graham crackers never became, well, cracker-y.   They stayed sort of biscuity no matter what - it may have been that we didn’t roll the dough thin enough, or that we didn’t bake it long enough (recommended 12 minutes with regular flour - we went eighteen).

At any rate, it tasted graham-y, so we went on to the nanaimo bars:

Nanaimo Bars

Ingredients:

Bottom Layer:
1/2 cup Unsalted Butter
1/4 cup Granulated Sugar
5 tablespoons Unsweetened Cocoa
1 Large Egg, Beaten
1 1/4 cups Gluten Free Graham Wafer Crumbs (See previous recipe)
1/2 cup Almonds (Any type, Finely chopped)
1 cup Coconut (Shredded, sweetened or unsweetened)

Middle Layer:
1/2 cup Unsalted Butter
2 tablespoons and 2 teaspoons Heavy Cream
2 tablespoons Vanilla Custard Powder (Such as Bird’s. Vanilla pudding mix may be substituted.)
2 cups Icing Sugar

Top Layer:
4 ounces Semi-sweet chocolate
2 tablespoons Unsalted Butter

Directions:
1. For bottom Layer: Melt unsalted butter, sugar and cocoa in top of a double boiler. Add egg and stir to cook and thicken. Remove from heat. Stir in crumbs, nuts and coconut. Press firmly into an ungreased 8 by 8 inch pan.
2. For Middle Layer: Cream butter, cream, custard powder, and icing sugar together well. Beat until light in colour. Spread over bottom layer.
3. For Top Layer: Melt chocolate and unsalted butter over low heat. Cool. Once cool, pour over middle layer and chill.

The bottom layer of the Nanaimo Bars was heavenly.  Dense, cocoa-coconut goodness.  The top layer- well, chocolate and butter melted together are almost impossible to screw up.

But did you know that Icing Sugar is not, in fact, granulated sugar?  Yeah, so did I.  That didn’t prevent me from using it, though, and let me tell you… the texture of the middle layer is not, well, pleasant if you make this mistake.  Grainy, even.  So the bars didn’t quite come together for us, but I can tell from everyone else’s posts that this was not a common occurrence.  So thanks so much to Lauren for an awesome challenge!  Sorry we messed it up!

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Posted By The Barracuda on January 17, 2010

The January 2010 DC challenge was hosted by Cuppy of Cuppylicious and she chose a delicious Thai-inspired recipe for Pork Satay from the book 1000 Recipes by Martha Day.

I can’t tell you how excited I am to be back to cooking!  And baking!  And eating!  Heh, well, okay, I admit - I never stopped the last one.  But it’s a new year, a new challenge, and new food to make.  So on that note, the January challenge for the Daring Cooks was satay, as mentioned above.  I did chicken instead of pork, as that’s what I had.  And I used the quick marinade because, well, I had to be quick.  I’m in the process of moving in to the husband’s house, so I only really had one day in which to make it.

The marinade I used was as follows:

2 T vegetable oil
2 T lemon juice
1 T soy sauce
1 tsp ginger powder
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp cayenne pepper

All stuff that I already had!  Except for a lemon, which I had to buy.  And I have to admit that I still don’t have measuring spoons at his house, so I winged it.  I might have overestimated a smidge, as my chicken came out crazy strong tasting, but we both loved it!  The chicken marinated for an hour, and then I fried up the chicken in a pan, making sure they got nice and brown:

Then I assembled the sauce:

3/4 cup coconut milk
4 Tbsp peanut butter
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1 Tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1-2 dried red chilies, chopped

I also left out the chilis.  Not because we don’t love heat, but because I didn’t have them.  We really  need to get to the grocery!

The proper method is to mix the dry ingredients, then add the soy sauce and lemon.  Then you heat up the coconut milk, peanut butter, and your mixture over low heat.  I believe I just threw everything in a pot and stirred a lot, but it tasted wonderful for all that.

I used some lovely cabbage from our CSA as a side, sauteed with a little sesame oil and soy sauce, and overall the meal was great!  I love everything about this dish - the spices, the heat, the peanut butter, the coconut milk - it’s all great!  Definitely worth making again, and a great challenge to start the new year!

As a side note, I’m really excited about the CSA so far - what am I going to do with all these vegetables?!

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Posted By The Barracuda on December 6, 2009

The November 2009 Daring Bakers Challenge was chosen and hosted by Lisa Michele of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. She chose the Italian Pastry, Cannolo (Cannoli is plural), using the cookbooks Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich and The Sopranos Family Cookbook by Allen Rucker; recipes by Michelle Scicolone, as ingredient/direction guides. She added her own modifications/changes, so the recipe is not 100% verbatim from either book.
Whew.  So crazy when life attacks - but now I am married, honeymooned, and mostly thank-you-noted.  Most importantly, I am ready to get to baking and cooking again!

The cannoli were an interesting challenge - I have never had them more than once or twice, and I certainly don’t deep fry often.  The sum of my experience could easily be counted as a few cheap ones from local mediocre restaurants (stuffed with icing, not the cheese), and watching “The Godfather.”  So I didn’t have a lot of basis for comparison with this one.  Or even a basis for building expectation.

The filling I found surprisingly tasty.  I don’t particularly care for dessert cheeses, but I liked it.

Cannoli Filling:

2 lbs ricotta cheese, drained
1 2/3 cup confectioner’s sugar, sifted
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract, or the beans from one vanilla bean
3 tbsp. finely chopped good quality chocolate of your choice
2 tbsp. finely chopped, candied orange peel, or the grated zest of one small to medium orange
3 tbsp. toasted, finely chopped pistachios

The only changes I made were to leave out the orange peel/grated zest, which I wish I had put in — I’m going to blame my scatterbrained grocerly listing on this one — and changing the pistachios to pecans (as they were what I had on hand).  Very yummy stuff, this filling.

Cannoli Dough:

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. unsweetened baking cocoa powder
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. salt
3 tbsp. vegetable or olive oil
1 tsp. white wine vinegar
Appx. 1/2 cup sweet Marsala or white/red wine
Egg white from 1 large egg
Vegetable oil or neutral frying oil - appx. 2 quarts
1/2 cup chopped pistachio nuts, mini chocolate chips or grated chocolate, and candied or plain zests, fruits, etc. for garnish
Confectioner’s sugar, for garnish

The cannolis themselves were easy to mix together, and the rolling went very well once Katie broke out the pasta roller.

For the tubing, I bought two different sizes of dowel rods, and we lubed them sufficiently (hopefully) with vegetable oil.  We had issues with a few of them sticking, but for the most part they came off easily enough.

I have to say, I was very brave.  No, no, don’t cheer, please.  I don’t like deep-frying, and I’m petrified of it, but it really wasn’t that bad.  See?

Both of those instruments are being held by none other than moi.  I was going to have Katie do it, but you can only be a pansy for so long!  Deep frying for the win!

The shells came out pretty well, other than the few aforementioned shells that stuck and, therefore, shattered a wee bit:

Then it was a simple step to load the filling into a ziplock back and fill the shells up!

So we did it!  Cannoli assembled.  Everyone really seemed to enjoy them.  I remain unsold on cannoli in general, but I’m picky like that.  Wonderful challenge, and I really enjoyed having my horizons broadened!  Even if they were broadened into giant pots of boiling oil…

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Posted By The Barracuda on September 17, 2009

Was there a blog check line for this month?  Ah well.  The Daring Cooks challenge for this month was from Debyi at The Healthy Vegan Kitchen, and she challenged us to make Dosas, along with a chick-pea filling and a coconut curry sauce.  It was absolutely fantastic, and a lot easier than expected.

(Sorry for the crappy photo!)

For the Dosas themselves, which I made first and kept warm in the microwave (I stick everything in the microwave for safekeeping - chips, chocolate chips, bread… much to Fu’s consternation - this seemed like a natural extension), I needed:

1 cup (120gm/8oz) spelt flour (or all-purpose, gluten free flour) - I used whole wheat flour, which I hope didn’t go against the rules
½ tsp (2½ gm) salt
½ tsp (2½ gm) baking powder
½ tsp (2½ gm) curry powder
½ cup (125ml/4oz) almond milk (or soy, or rice, etc.)
¾ cup (175ml/6oz) water
cooking spray, if needed

You mix the dry ingredients, then add the wet gradually, then spray your pan and get to making dosas.  I had to add a whole lot of extra almond milk/water to make the texture what seemed right.  But seeing as how I’ve had dosas maybe once before, how would I know the texture?  I went with more because I couldn’t get it to spread, and with the extra liquid it went like a dream.

The bubbles were so nifty, coming up in the same spiral you ladled the dough.

So that went pretty well.  Then on to the coconut curry sauce - since who doesn’t love a coconut curry sauce?  I needed the following:

1 onion, peeled and chopped
2 cloves garlic
½ (2½ gm) tsp cumin, ground
¾ (3¾ gm) tsp sea salt (coarse)
3 TBSP (30gm) curry powder
3 TBSP (30gm) spelt flour (or all-purpose GF flour)
3 cups (750ml/24oz) vegetable broth
2 cups (500ml/24oz) coconut milk
3 large tomatoes, diced

You mix the onion and garlic over medium heat until soft, then add the spices for a minute or so, then add the flour and keep going for a minute, then add the vegetable broth and stir your heart out so it’s not lumpy.  Add gradually, as per the instructions, and, fyi, whole wheat flour is very lumpy.  But I persevered.  Then you just add the coconut milk and tomatoes and let it simmer for half an hour, and you’re good to go.

And finally, the dosa filling:

5 cloves garlic
1 onion, peeled and finely diced
1 carrot, peeled and finely diced
1 green pepper, finely diced (red, yellow or orange are fine too)
2 medium hot banana chilies, minced
2 TBSP (16gm) cumin, ground
1 TBSP (8gm) oregano
1 TBSP (8gm) sea salt (coarse)
1 TBSP (8gm) turmeric
4 cups (850gm/30oz) cooked or canned chick peas (about 2 cans)
½ cup (125gm/4oz) tomato paste

This was even easier - you just mix everything but the chickpeas and tomato paste together over medium heat and let it go until the onions are soft.  Meanwhile, mash up the chickpeas, and then mix the chickpeas and tomato paste and just get it warmed through.  It was very, very easy.

The finished product:

I liked it pretty well (although, let’s be honest, you could put a coconut curry sauce on a shoe and I’d think it was the best thing ever), but Fu liked it a whole lot.  And I have to admit, about halfway through I gave up with the dosas and just ate the curry sauce on rice.  I think my issue was that I didn’t have ground cumin, just whole, and I was far too lazy to finish grinding it up all the way, so it was “pleasant bite, pleasant bite, CUMIN!!!!!, pleasant bite, CUMIN!!!!!”… which was disconcerting.  But overall, this is something I would make again.  It didn’t take all that long, and I’m always game for curry.

(And thanks to Fu for washing the dishes)

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Posted By The Barracuda on August 30, 2009

So…

The August 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers’ cookbook Kaffeehaus:  Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

Yeah.

This did not go well.

We made the sponge  cake layers in individual throw-away cake pans…

They were okay, I guess.  Soggy, I think, because we made them too thick.

The buttercream tasted great…

But was chocolate soup.  I’m not sure why this happened.  It may be because the mixer was too large for the amount of buttercream, so it didn’t blend together right.

And the caramel… the caramel…

Well.  Two-foot flames are generally considered a failure, no?

This is what it looked like in the end, minus the caramel, of course.

It… did not taste good.  The textures were altogether off-putting.  Like soggy pancakes with really, really rich chocolate pudding on top.   The fault, I realize, lies completely with the cooks.

But this was not a good challenge for us.

Maybe next time.

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Posted By The Barracuda on August 15, 2009

This month’s challenge was brought to us by Olga of Olga’s Recipes.  The recipe was Rice with Mushrooms, Cuttlefish and Artichokes.  A very detailed and wonderful recipe can be found, in its entirety, at her site.  With the appropriate instructions, which I somehow forgot to use.  Ah well.  The truly challenging bit about this month was the garlic allioli, which accompanied the rice mixture.

Below, please see the vegetables for the sofregit:

This smelled wonderful.  I kind of just wanted to serve this with bread and dig right in.  But, you know, we didn’t just make the sofregit for the smell, it actually had to be used in the recipe itself.

I didn’t find any cuttlefish, so I settled for the acceptable substitute of squid.  Which totally drove off my friends!  Katie, I’m looking at you.  Wusses.  You couldn’t even really taste the squid… it was more of a texture and a hint of the sea.  This may be because I found some chorizo sausage at the store and couldn’t resist throwing it in… Nah.  It’s totally due to the fact that squid is a lovely, wonderfully textured accent that all my friends were wusses for not wanting to eat.  Yeah.

The best picture I apparently remembered to take once the excitement of assembly took off was this:

Looks tasty, no?  The challenge, though… the allioli.  So, um, yeah.  This did not come together for me.  At all.  I don’t want to point fingers, or anything, because any fingers pointed would end up squarely directed at me.  But someone who helped poured an eighth of a cup of olive oil into the mixture at once, and it never came together.

In the end, it was okay, though!  Did you notice the little bowl of oil next to the plate in the picture of the finished product?  That was a little bit of the garlic mash added to a bunch more olive oil with some cracked pepper on top.  Okay, and some parmesan cheese, inauthentic though it may be.  Fantastic for dipping bread, if a little strong.  Okay, a lot strong.  No vampires at my house!

But the meal was excellent!   Thanks so much, Olga.  Everyone liked the recipe, in all its squid-y glory.  Everyone, that is, except the wusses.

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Posted By The Barracuda on July 28, 2009

The July Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth.  She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network.

I have to say, this was an exciting challenge.  Milano cookies are my favorite offering from the Pepperidge Farm catalog, and, while I never have been a huge fan of marshmallow cookies, I’ve never had anything against them, either!  I did this challenge with Katie from KBK Bakery, and it was tons of fun.  Our pictures are currently being held hostage, however…  Update soon to follow with pictorial evidence!

The Mallow recipe can be found at the Food Network website.  It was pretty straightforward and easy to follow, and the piping of the marshmallows was great fun.  I have to say, though, that the taste did not blow me over.  Marshmallows… good.  Chocolate… good.  Cookie bottom… kinda bland.  And, to be honest, the overall taste was… a Moon Pie.  Maybe that’s how Mallows are supposed to taste?  I never have had many of them.  And I do like Moon Pies!  Perhaps I was just burnt by my own high expectations.  I expected transcendence, and received merely a yummy cookie.

Bah.  Maybe I should just get over it!  They were tasty!

I had better luck with the Milan recipe, also over at the Food Network website.  While they did not really taste like my beloved Milano cookies, the wafers were very refreshing with their citrus flavors.  This was after a day, though… right after making they are almost off-puttingly lemon-flavored.  Maybe we mis-measured?  I don’t know.  But regardless, after a day the wafers mellowed to a pleasant citrus vibe and they did have the measured crunch of the milano base.  It’s a very satisfying cookie to bite into, I have to say.  And it tasted wonderful, especially with coffee and tea! 

I brought  both of these to the office, and the Mallows got the more impressed reactions, but the Milans got eaten up the quickest.  Which kinda mirrors my own feelings about them.  This was an awesome challenge overall, though!  It was a fantastic idea to try to replicate favorite dessert treats, and it was a blast to make them.  Thanks Nicole!

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Posted By The Barracuda on June 19, 2009

This week I barely cooked.  And I mean barely.  I heated up some refried beans last night and served them with microwaved, warmed-up tortillas… and folks, that was the first night I made dinner all week.  Boy it was good, though!  Nothing like a bean burrito to make your week a little cheerier.

But since it’s Friday night, and the mood is right… ahem… I mean, since it’s Friday and Fu’s coming over, and since I wanted to make dinner, I decided to try out a new recipe from Eating Well in Season: The Farmers’ Market Cookbook, by Jessie Price and the Editors of Eating Well.  Now, don’t take this fancy-pants book title to mean that I actually make it to the farmer’s market more than once a month, because I don’t.  I wish I did, but the farmer’s market closes before I get off work on Saturdays, and goodness knows I’m not going to get up earlier.  Again with the excuses!

This book has some great looking recipes, though, including the above-referenced Beef Tataki.  The beef is nice and rare, and the citrus-soy-ginger dressing is fan-freaking-tastic.  I could just eat that on top of carbs and call it a meal.  And even though the book espouses using whole-grain carbs, I totally ate this with sticky white rice.  Botan for the win!

Beef Tataki
adapted from Eating Well in Season: The Farmers’ Market Cookbook
by Jessie Price and the Editors of Eating Well

Slaw mix:
1 cup julienned radishes (or daikon radish, if you don’t live in the sticks)
1 cup julienned carrots
1 cup thinly sliced onion (the recipe really calls for a half cup, but the onions were, seriously, the best part of the vegetables)

Dressing:
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon finely chopped scallions (I cut this down - I really just don’t like scallions that much, but feel free to use more)
2 teaspoons freshly grated ginger

1 lb boneless sirloin, seasoned with salt and pepper on both sides
2 teaspoons canola oil

1. Mix together slaw vegetables and cover with cold water; let rest for at least five minutes.
2. Mix together dressing ingredients.
3. Drain vegetables and toss with 2 tablespoons of the dressing.
4. Cook steaks in canola oil on medium-high heat for three to four minutes per side (medium rare).  Let rest for five minutes, then slice thinly.
5. Assemble!  Drizzle with the dressing!

Really, this recipe goes very quickly other than the julienning, which is slowed down more, I think, by my pitiful knife skills than anything else.  The vast majority of time spent is simply on chopping up the vegetables.  It’s also fairly healthy, which is always a plus.  Just use brown rice or whole wheat noodles instead of Botan, and you’ve got a nutritious dinner.

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Posted By The Barracuda on June 14, 2009

I’m excited, if you can’t tell.  This challenge was ridiculously fun.  I have always wanted to make pot stickers.  In fact, they’re one of the foods  that I get cravings for that must be satisfied, so it’s going to be a lot easier for Fu to tell me to get the ingredients and make some instead of driving me to town to pick some up.  Although I have to say, this isn’t exactly a spur-of-the-minute deal - to get me to fold dumplings for an hour or two requires advance planning.  Maybe I can just fill the freezer to bursting with them…

I went with the standard pork filling, because who doesn’t love pork (barring ethical-type reasons, of course)?:

1 lb ground pork (I may have used more than necessary… what can I say?  I like pork!)
4 large napa cabbage leaves, minced
3 stalks green onions, minced
7 shitake mushrooms, minced
1/2 cup bamboo shoots, minced
1/4 cup ginger root, minced
3 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp sesame oil
2 tbsp corn starch

I have to say - I didn’t measure properly, because Fu doesn’t have measuring spoons at his house.  I know!  Who doesn’t own a tablespoon measure?!  Fu.  It’s all good, though.

This involved a lot of mincing, and I may not have minced well enough.  It didn’t seem to make a noticeable difference in the pot stickers themselves, though.

Well, at least not that I noticed.  See, a potsticker!

The very first one.  I don’t think I rolled the first batch out thin enough, but I didn’t have too much trouble with the pleating technique.  This is the time when people can feel free to say “It’s all wrong” and I’ll believe you.

Dough:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup warm water
flour for worksurface

To make the dough, I followed the instructions at Use Real Butter, although I just mixed it together without use of a food processor.  Basically, it’s mix, rest 15 minutes with moisture-retaining device employed atop the dough (I went with a damp paper towel), then slice the dome into fourths (roughly).  Roll a section into a snake about 1.5 inches wide, cut up the snake (be vicious) into 1 or so inch pieces, then roll!  Roll like you’ve never rolled before!  Roll quickly and stuff!  And keep extra flour around, ’cause that dough gets sticky when warm.  And pleat.  I won’t even try to relay those instructions. The link explains it far better than I ever could.

The cooking method is fairly simple - I decided on frying them up.  I mean, really - how do they stick to the pot if you steam them?  Sheesh.  It’s pretty simple - sautee in oil on high heat for a minute or two, toss in a 1/2 cup of water, cover (quick!)  and let boil for a few minutes until cooked.  Then uncover, let them dry out a bit, and eat.  Maybe let ‘em cool off a bit, if you’re not Fu.

So there they were, a plate full of my very first dumplings, headed for the pan…

… And they burnt.  To a crisp.  Solid black bottom.  None of the nice, spotted, textured, golden-brown goodness of the instructional photos referenced above.  Lesson learned?  Go for barely even brown before throwing in the water.  We salvaged a few and served them to my less-than-impressed parents, who then gladly went out with us for pizza.  But overall, not so hot.

So I tried again!

Please ignore that monster on the right there… I was tired, and I used too much dough… I know, I know - there are no excuses.

But these came out so tasty!  And un-burnt!  It was wonderful.

That is actual, photographic evidence that I didn’t burn the second batch.

On a side note, these dumpling contained raw pork.  And you can take the girl out of Kentucky, but you can’t take the Kentucky out of the girl.  My grandmother burns every piece of meat until it’s black, and she still worries about disease.  And while I have learned to appreciate a medium-rare steak, I have a thing about raw pork. I don’t know what a trichinosis looks like, but I know I don’t want it in me.

So I totally microwaved these for a minute after they were done.

I know!  I fail!  But OMG, so good.  I loved this recipe, I loved trying out the potstickers, and I loved, loved eating them.  With the sauce:

2 parts soy sauce
1 part red wine vinegar (I tried to find black but, if I can’t find soba noodles in my neck of the woods, how likely is black vinegar to show up?  Come on)
a few drops of sesame oil
chili garlic paste
minced garlic

Totally fabulous!  I can’t wait for the next challenge.  Bring it!

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