Andrea, Author at Asian Dumpling Tips

How to Fold a Closed Satchel (video)

Asian Dumplings Cookbook, Technique Videos and Photos

Don’t be daunted by the task of making bao – the pillowy filled buns that you may have eaten lots of at dim sum. The shape is akin to cinching up a satchel (think of a hobo bag). You need this shape to master stuffed buns (Chinese bao, Filipino siopao, Vietnamese banh bao) and the graduate level Shanghai soup dumpling (xiao long bao, XLB). “The Perfect Shanghai Soup Dumpling” video I taped with the Chinese chef at Shanghai Dumpling King gives you a sense of rapid fire closed satchel making. You can work up to that but he started decades ago.

The video below slows thing down quite a bit to help you along. Do note that this shape only works for wrappers that you make from scratch. Do not try this technique on purchased pot sticker or wontons as they are not moist enough to seal properly. That said, review the instructions in Asian Dumplings on how to roll out dumpling wrappers and watch the video. That will bring you up to speed on where this video takes off!

A dumpling makeover tip: When making yeast-leavened bao, you can steam the dumpling with the pleats facing down to hide imperfections! No one will be the wiser.

Related how-to videos:

How to Teach Children to Cook? Make Wontons

Cooking Tips & Tricks

I was asked to a number of food-related events during my visit to Yale university this past weekend. One of the events involved families with children adopted from Vietnam. The kids ranged in age from 3 to 12 years old.

My niece Paulina and her cohorts of the ALIVE program at Yale outreach specifically to parents who have adopted children from Vietnam. The parents, kids, and students get together on average once every 3 weeks. The experience helps the children and parents to build bridges between their Vietnamese and American heritage.

Paulina and her friend Vi asked me for a dumpling recipe that they could make with the children. I suggested wontons. That’s what my mother started me on after I learned to make rice for our family. I recommended the poached wontons in soy sauce and chile oil (see the thin skin chapter in Asian Dumplings) because:

(1) the Yale students could prepare the filling in advance
(2) there are good commercial wonton skins available at supermarkets
(3) anyone can wrap a wonton and
(4) the dumplings are simply boiled and then served with the dipping sauce.

Perfect for a party of about 20 kids and an equal amount of adults (40 people total). The chile oil was omitted for picky eaters. Whether or not you make wontons, think of the above 4 points when picking a dumpling to teach children. That is, keep it simple.

By the time I arrived at the event, the wonton filling station was already set up at a coffee table — the perfect height for children to gather around and work. I didn’t think any of that up. The Yale students did!

After a brief introduction, the children and Yale students set out to fill and shape wontons. “The kids are really fast,” Paulina told me. “We showed them how to do it, with using their fingers to wet the wrapper. Then they made their own shapes.”

In about 30 minutes, there were about 100 filled wontons, ready to be poached off. I amazed. The cooked wontons were eaten faster than they were made. Here's a satisfied dumpling maker and eater:

When I was a child, folding wontons was a kitchen assignment that I got. I mostly worked alone and now I know that it’s a terrific kids party activity!

Some other helpful links:

How to fold basic wonton shapes (video instruction)
Wonton skin buying guide (tips on finding,
choosing, and using)
Crab Rangoon fried wonton recipe (an American
classic)
Almost
Meatless
Pork and Vegetable Pot Stickers Recipe (w/ an interesting shape to
learn)
Modern
Indian Chile Pea Puffs Recipe(a baked wonton acting like a samosa)

Lucky Foods Potato Rolls Tries Too Hard

Store Bought Dumplings

Yesterday my husband spotted a highly unusual frozen dumpling at our neighborhood market. While I was inspecting bags of frozen porcini filled gnocchi from Italy, he was looking at boxes of “frozen potato rolls” by Lucky Foods, an Asian themed food producer based in Beaverton, Oregon. “Curry flavor or jalapeno and cheese?” he asked.

My gawd, it looked as if Lucky Foods had combined the elements of an egg roll, lumpia, samosa and jalapeno cheese popper all in one. And, on the back of the box, they said that their potato rolls reflected the synergy between Chinese egg rolls and Vietnamese cha gio (imperial rolls). Huh? The rolls were totally vegetarian and used farm-fresh ingredients, the company touted. Lucky Foods had poured all the popular selling points into their rolls. And they were fried.

My curiosity was piqued and I couldn’t resist grabbing a box of the curry-flavored potato rolls. When we went to pay for it, the fresh-faced cashier picked up the box and inspected it. “Is this something new that we’re carrying?” she asked skeptically.

“I’d never seen them before but we’re going to give them a try,” I responded. She looked at us warily.

Basic Wonton Shapes (Triangle, Flower Bud, Nurse’s Cap)

Asian Dumpling Basics, Asian Dumplings Cookbook, Technique Videos and Photos

I made my first wontons when I was in elementary school. They were triangles. Because my mother would give me about 3 packages of wontons to fill and fold, I started with the simple triangle and graduated to more complicated shapes. Then I had friends show me their nifty ones. I've also watched plenty of Chinese restaurant cooks fold wontons using a single chopstick or a bamboo spatula. They work at lightning speed. Those wonton professionals have folded thousands, if not tens of thousands of wontons. It just takes practice.

You can devise your own fanciful wontons but it helps to have a foundation to work off of. Here's a video that I taped with CHOW.com for their 2010 Lunar New Year dumpling-a-thon. If you're new to wonton folding or need extra detail aside from what is already in Asian Dumplings, this is the video for you!

Video presented courtesy of CHOW.com

Some other helpful links:

Wonton skin buying guide (tips on finding, choosing, and using)
Crab Rangoon fried wonton recipe (an American classic)
Almost Meatless Pork and Vegetable Pot Stickers Recipe (w/ an interesting shape to learn)
Modern Indian Chile Pea Puffs Recipe(a baked wonton acting like a samosa)

Rangoon Ruby Cocktail: Perfect with Crab Rangoon

All Recipes, Drinks, Vegetarian recipes

Asian dumplings can be enjoyed with many kinds of beverages, not just tea. Last week, my husband made a tropical cocktail to go with the deep-fried crab Rangoon wontons. It was a splendid way to finish the day, or start the night.

Trader Vic’s was, and still is, famous for its cocktails. Out of curiosity, I flipped to the back of the Trader Vic’s Pacific Island Cookbook to the “Drinks Recipes” chapter. Whoever owned the before me put the cocktail section to great use. It was the most stained part of the book.

There were recipes for San Francisco favorites, tropical drinks, and party punches. Names such as Silver Stallion, Tabu [sic], and Tiki Punch conjured up the restaurant’s ‘exotic’ tiki atmosphere. A perfect place for crab Rangoon to reign supreme. But what would one drink with crab Rangoon? There were many options but I settled on the Rangoon Ruby. The wonton and drink are in the same ersatz club, no? There was even a cheesy, period-appropriate photo too!

Crab Rangoon Recipe

All Recipes, Chinese Dumpling Recipes, Chinese recipes

So crab Rangoon has little to do with Asia itself but many of you have an affinity for the crispy deep-fried wontons filled with cream cheese. Your comments here and on Facebook made me think that yeah – crab Rangoon deserves to be in the pantheon of Asian dumplings. The thing is that most of what we’ve tasted inside the Chinese restaurant version of these wontons is cream cheese. As a lactose-intolerant Asian, I’m disappointed by such a fried morsel. Where’s the crabbiness? There’s not even fake Krab!

The world is full of tasty dumplings to eat so I don’t like to waste time or calories on bad ones. If there’s a carb overload to be had, let’s make it really worth it, especially when deep-frying is involved. So here’s my crab Rangoon recipe. If you contrast it to the original recipe in the Trader Vic’s Pacific Island Cookbook, you’ll notice that my crab Rangoon recipe contains more crab. Trader Vic’s opted for a 1:1 ratio of cream cheese to crab meat. Let’s not fool around. We’ve been missing the crab for too many decades. Get good crab meat – the kind you’d use in crab salad or crab cakes.

Also, I’m a sucker for black pepper with crab so there’s a nice amount in there, and fresh scallion too. But to keep the mid-century flavor, I opted to use garlic powder. I was out of A-1 sauce and found a worthy – if not better—substitute in Japanese Tonkatsu sauce, which I had around from making the Japanese takoyaki dumplings (octopus balls). You could use a drop of Worcestershire or black vinegar too.

[Read more…] about Crab Rangoon Recipe