Andrea, Author at Asian Dumpling Tips

Does Crab Rangoon Deserve to be an Asian Dumpling Classic?

Books, Chinese Dumpling Recipes, Chinese recipes

You may have had these creamy filled wonton â€œpuffsâ€ at Chinese restaurants and didnâ€™t know exactly what you were eating. Called Crab Rangoon, the wontons are an American classic, an ersatz food invented at Trader Vicâ€™s, the uber San Francisco Bay Area Polynesian-themed restaurant; Trader Vicâ€™s was among the leaders of the tiki-bar/restaurant movement thatâ€™s making a comeback today. Crab Rangoon was supposedly based on a Burmese recipe but thereâ€™s no proof of that. (Rangoon is also known as Yangon, the former capital of Burma, which is now called Myanmar.)

Iâ€™ve not seen a fried dumpling filled with cream cheese in Southeast Asia. Have you?

Crab Rangoon was served in America beginning in perhaps the early 1950s, and since then, it has worked its way onto many Chinese-American restaurant menus as an appetizer item. My Asian friends who grew up in Middle America remember making and eating lots of crab Rangoon. Hsiao-Ching Chou, the former editor of the Seattle Post Intelligencerâ€™s food section, once mentioned the countless crab Rangoons that she prepared at her familyâ€™s restaurant in the Midwest. A few weeks ago, I met Monica, a Chinese-American financier who grew up in Wichita, Kansas. When it came to ordering off the Chinese takeout menu for dinner, she swooned at the mention of â€œfried cream cheese puffs.â€

â€œOh yum, crab Rangoon,â€ she said wistfully, dropping all pretensions of being a sophisticated Manhattanite. â€œI lovvve them.â€

When I got home, I looked through my cookbook collection and discovered that I happened to have a copy of the 1968 Trader Vicâ€™s Pacific Island Cookbook by owner Vic Bergeron. The fast-paced work is filled with recipes from exotic locales, including many in Asia in addition to wild Mexico, Texas, and bohemian San Francisco where Bergeron built his burgeoning empire. Nowadays, such a book would be politically incorrect because it mashes cultures and cuisines up. Indian recipes are stuck in the Southeast Asia chapter, for example. But the Trader Vicâ€™s cookbook served its purpose to introduce post-war America to the ingredients, flavors, and cooking techniques of ethnicâ€”kind of â€“ cuisines. It was a different era.

Below is a photo of the actual recipe from the Trader Vic’s cookbook. Read it and see how it reflects the 1960s:

Over fifty years later, the popularity of crab Rangoon in America has not waned. Whenever my parents go to the Indian gambling casinos, they eat at Asian buffets and guess what is among the selection? When I met Cady, a non-Asian 15 year old, we talked dumplings as they were among her favorite foods. When I mentioned the Asian Dumplings cookbook, she said, â€œDo you have crab Rangoon in there?â€

â€œNo I donâ€™t. Theyâ€™re not part of the classic Asian repertoire of dumplings,â€ I responded. But months later, after considering my various friends acquaintances who have experienced crab Rangoon in positive and negative ways, maybe crab Rangoon deserves entry into pantheon of Asian dumplings.

What are your experiences and thoughts about crab Rangoon? Thumbs up or down? Why?

Related link: Crab Rangoon Recipe

Wonton Skin Buying Tips

Asian Ingredients, Cooking Tips & Tricks

If you have time and a pasta machine, try your hand at making your own wonton skins. But if you don’t, be an informed, smart wonton skin shopper! Many first-timer dumpling makers start with pre-made wonton skins as their wrappers, so I hope that this post will elaborate on text in Asian Dumplings and deliver you even closer to dumpling mastery. When shopping for good wonton skins, keep these tips in mind:

Where to Buy
Good pre-made wonton skins are sold at Chinese and Southeast Asian markets. There is a faster turnover rate and they have a bigger selection.

There are decent wonton skins at supermarkets. Dynasty brand above, made by JFC (an Asian company) is actually quite good. Many specialty grocers carry Azumaya but I’ve consistently found that they are dry, thick, and difficult to work with. Yes, they pass the paper ream test described below but they disappoint.

How to Buy
Pick your thickness. Wonton skins come in different thicknesses. I’ve seen thin, medium, and thick. Then there’s also super thin Hong Kong-style and egg-less Shanghai-style skins that are pure white. I like thin ones, but medium is okay. Thick wonton skins produce an overly doughy result that can overwhelm the filling. Egg-less wonton skins are great for vegans but lack a bit of richness.

Examine the ingredients. Aim for skins with egg and no food coloring. Read the label. Frozen eggs are better than no egg at all, in my opinion. Manufactures add food coloring to mimic the use of real eggs. But my homemade wonton skins don’t have a yellow cast.

Test for freshness. After determining the wonton skins thickness, I test their freshness. I run my fingers on the stack and if they fall nicely like a ream of paper, they they’re fresh and supple. If they are smashed together and damp looking, you don’t want that package.

In Your Kitchen
Use more water to seal purchased skins. People in the past used egg and I think it’s because their skins may have been very dry or on the thick side, thus requiring extra “glue”. Also, egg is used with spring roll skins. But you can get by just fine with water.

Freeze leftover skins or shaped wontons. You can keep them for about 1 month. Or, follow the directions in the recipe to shape the wontons (works best with raw fillings) and then freeze them for the future!

Wonton skins are a good substitute steamed open face sui mai dumplings. Just use a round cookie cutter to get a round skin. BUT, wonton skins are not great for pot stickers as the skins are too delicate. Pot stickers need some chew to them to reflect their wonderful rusticity.

Asian Dumplings Potluck Tips

Asian Dumpling Basics, Asian Dumplings Cookbook, Cooking Tips & Tricks

I love to spread and share the wealth when it comes to cooking and eating dumplings. You don't have to do all the work. Let go and invite others to participate. Aside from organizing a dumpling making party, you can also hold a potluck! Over the weekend, I attended an Asian Dumplings cookbook club potluck organized by 18 Reasons, a non-profit organization in San Francisco that’s part of the Bi-Rite family of locally-owned businesses in the Mission district. About 20 people attended with an amazing array of dumplings prepared from recipes in the book. They totally strutted their Asian dumpling stuff.

My goodness — there were Korean mandu, pot stickers, Chinese poached water dumplings (shui jiao), Vietnamese water dumplings (banh bot loc), Shanghai soup dumplings, Filipino lumpia, spiced lamb Nepalese momos, Cantonese shrimp rice rolls, samosas, taro puffs, and Indian gulab jamun milk dumplings. I brought Singaporean spiced pineapple tarts. I’d never seen such a range of Asian dumplings in one place at one time (even my own kitchen). The potluck warmed the cockles of my heart and gave me a dumpling carb overload! (See photographer Emily Heller's montage of images to get a sense of how much fun we had.)

It was fabulous to hear people's experiences with making dumplings, how they didn't think they could do it and how they practiced and persisted. As someone at potluck said, "Dumplings are instant smiles."

My Baking Soda and Bao Mistake (don’t do this!)

Asian Ingredients, Cooking Tips & Tricks

I try to not cook too early in the morning, especially when I have not had my cup of coffee. One recent weekend morning, I forgot that personal rule of thumb and set out to make a batch of yeasted bun (bao) dough for some steamed chicken bao that I'd planned to take to a luncheon. "How can I fail," I smugly said to myself. I use a scale to accurately weigh my flour. I've made this recipe a zillion times. It's fail-safe. They will be steamed and still warm when I arrive at the luncheon and present our hosts with homemade bao. Perfect timing. It seemed all perfectly downhill from there.

Well, not. What happened was this: I reached into my cupboard for the round container of baking powder and mistakenly picked up the baking soda, which came in a similarly-shaped container. For years I kept the soda in a glass container in another cupboard, but several months ago, I purchased some organic baking soda from Trader Joe's and the little cylindrical paper container was of the same size as your typical Clabber Girl/Calumet brand.

When the dough rising time was over, I noticed that it hadn't puffed up as much as usual. Oh, well — I thought, it may be the air temperature or humidity level. Whatever. I formed my buns, let them rise and steamed them up.

Mochi Covered Dark Chocolate Truffles a la Betelnut

All Recipes, Dessert Dumpling Recipes, Gluten Free Recipes, Japanese Dumpling Recipes, Rice Dumpling Recipes, Vegetarian Dumpling Recipes

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.

Mochi Master Michael Siegel

Dessert Dumpling Recipes, Dumpling Restaurants

If you’ve ever wandered through a Japanese market, chances are that you’ve noticed the dainty and lovely confections collectively known as wagashi. Diminutive, they can often take on gorgeous forms, such as the most perfect-looking peach painted with the subtle blush of summer. Bite into one and you may be surprised. The peach skin could be made of chewy sticky rice and the flesh may be made of sweetened bean paste. Several years ago, renowned Japanese food expert Elizabeth Andoh, author of Washoku among other titles, urged me to include wagashi recipes in Asian Dumplings but I demurred as the specific ingredients and precise techniques seemed way beyond mortals. Recently, however, Chef Michael Siegel of Betelnut restaurant in San Francisco convinced me otherwise.

Siegel and I met at the Culinary Institute of America’s World of Flavors conference last November 2009 in Napa. Alexander Ong, a partner and the executive chef of Betelnut introduced us, and Mike and I hit it off over a discussion of our mutual love for pastrami and bagels. Chef Siegel is Jewish-American and two years ago, his professional skills and innate curiosity brought him to Betelnut, a long-standing, acclaimed pan-Asian restaurant. He is Ong’s right-hand man in the kitchen, and Ong’s management style is to encourage his team to experiment all the while staying true to traditions. (If you go, reserve one of the three beggar’s chicken cooked in lotus leaf and clay that are cooked each night!)

After that initial meeting, I lunched at Betelnut and for dessert, Ong sent out the above plate of three spheres. The waiter presented it as the “mochi trio” – and indeed, they had the unmistakable opaque white appearance of sticky (glutinous) rice. My eyebrows rose with interest. Inside, each mochi dumpling contained a different type of chocolate ganache: white, milk, and dark. The little garnishes of marmalade, salted caramel sauce, and a Kahlua and espresso cream offered flavor counterpoints to the rich filling and slightly sweet wrapper. When I asked Ong for the low-down on the mochi dumplings, he proudly said they were Siegel’s creation. I promptly asked if Siegel would share his story and technique. We scheduled a demo a few weeks later.