Vegetarian Dumpling Recipes Archives

Giant Fried Jiaozi Dumplings Recipe

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Chinese cooks excel at making interesting and tasty vegan dumplings. Here is a recipe that I made today from Beyond the Great Wall by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. Filled with cellophane noodles, napa cabbage, shiitake and wood ear mushroom and pressed tofu, the Hunanese dumplings are deep fried to a crisp. (I tried shallow-frying them too!) They are enormous for dumplings as each one is about 7 to 8 inches long. You can make them smaller, if you like.

For details on these supersized Chinese dumplings, see the post on Viet World Kitchen.

Mochi Covered Dark Chocolate Truffles a la Betelnut

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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.

Portuguese Egg Tart Recipe (Poh Taht, Pasteis de Belem)

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Ask and you shall receive. Thank you to everyone who contributed insights on my question about Portuguese-Chinese egg tarts. They are a Portuguese treat called pasteis de Belem (a.k.a., pastel de nata) that were brought to Macau and adopted quite heartily by the Chinese. The Chinese, particular those in nearby Hong Kong created a riff by making their own Hong Kong-style egg tarts in the 1940s. The resulting Cantonese dahn taht has become ubiquitous with Chinese bakeries and dim sum houses.

Many of you submitted Portuguese egg tarts tips, such as where I can get them in the Bay Area, such as the bakery in Milpitas Square off the 880 freeway, in the 99 Ranch Market shopping center. Amy Sherman of CookingwithAmy.com gave a link to her post on the famous Portuguese egg tarts from the Antiga Confeitaria de Belém pastry shop in Lisbon, Portugal. That bakery was the one that commercialized the tarts in 1837. Before then, Portuguese egg tarts were made and sold by the Catholic nuns of the Jerónimos Monastery. (Praise the sisters!) Others pointed to the Macao institution that’s renowned for their Portuguese egg tarts – Lord Stow’s bakery. Stowe’s cross between the English and Portuguese versions is the benchmark for Portuguese egg tarts in Asia. Egg tart fever hit Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan in the late 1990s.

I looked up Stow’s and found this YouTube video which was incredibly enlightening. Watch it and in the first minute, catch how the pastry is rolled up into a cylinder and then pressed into the tart shell! For those of you who have the Asian Dumplings cookbook – that cylindrical treatment of dough is the same as what’s used for Chinese flaky pastry on page 120 to make things like Malaysian curry puffs. I now wonder if the Chinese got that from the Portuguese? I’ve not seen that technique applied to puff pastry in other cuisines.

By using a cylinder of rolled up puff pastry-type dough (some describe it as a Swiss roll) for the pastry, the tart shell naturally pushes upwards as it bakes in the oven. All that hot air forces the custard to puff up like a mushroom cap and when things deflate after baking, you get the characteristic undulating top. I know this because I went about five rounds with baking the tarts to develop my own Portuguese egg tart recipe.

Vegetarian Daikon Rice Cakes a la Slanted Door Recipe (Luo Bo Gao)

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To test drive Wai Chu’s recipe for Chinese daikon radish cakes, I bought a lot of daikon radish. You never know how much you’ll need and I didn’t want to keep running back to the store. Wai’s luóbo gāo (lok bok gow in Cantonese, 蘿蔔糕) from The Dumpling cookbook worked out like a charm on the first run-through so I had several pounds of leftover radish, some of which were used for Vietnamese daikon and radish pickles (do chua) that I’ll be stuffing into banh mi sandwiches.

Watching Charles Phan compete against Cat Cora on Iron Chef America’s battle almond got me thinking about Slanted Door’s vegetarian version of the daikon radish cakes. I recalled Phan proudly telling me in an interview how he infused a lot of umami into the cakes so that people wouldn’t miss the traditional dried shrimp and Chinese sausage. The Vietnamese cooks at Slanted Door who are in charge of the radish cakes said that it’s a perennial favorite; they should know as they’ve worked with Phan for many years. In tribute to Phan and his hardworking staff, I decided to take Wai’s recipe and make it vegetarian.

With all of that in mind, I used dried shiitake mushroom, soaking them and using the soaking liquid to infuse the mushroom and daikon with savory depth. I also sautéed the mushroom with scallion to further punch up the flavor, and added chopped cilantro. Beyond that, I just treated the mixture like the daikon radish cake recipe from The Dumpling. Voila – vegetarian daikon radish cakes that were full of flavor. Fried up, the cakes were just delightfully flavorful. In side by side taste tests with my husband Rory and our house guests Robyn Eckhardt and Dave Hagerman (EatingAsia blog) it was hard to choose which we liked more – the traditional version or the vegetarian one. Here’s the recipe for you to try and decide for yourself:

(For information on rice flour and wheat starch see the post on Asian dumpling ingredients. The glossary in Asian Dumplings, pages 8 to 17, has more details.)

RECIPE

Vegetarian Daikon Rice Cakes
Luobo Gao

Serves 6 to 8 as a snack or side dish

Dumpling
9 ounces (2 cups) regular rice flour, preferably a Thai brand, such as Erawan
1 ounce (scant ¼ cup) wheat starch
1 teaspoon and 1/4 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground white pepper
1 pound daikon radish
4 large dried shiitake mushrooms, rehydrated in 1 1/4 cups of water, stemmed and finely chopped
1 tablespoon canola or peanut oil
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon light (regular) soy sauce
2 scallions, finely chopped
2 tablespoons chopped cilantro (stems and leaves)

Canola oil, for panfrying
Light (regular) soy sauce
Chile Garlic Sauce, homemade or storebought

1. Combine the rice flour, wheat starch, 1 teaspoon salt, and pepper in a large bowl and set aside near the stove.

2. Peel the daikon and grate it through the small holes of your grater onto a nonterry kitchen towel. Or, use the smallest shredder blade on your food processor and transfer to a nonterry kitchen towel. Bring together the ends of the cloth and twist to squeeze out as much of the liquid as possible into the measuring cup. Transfer the daikon to a medium pot.

3. Remove the mushrooms from their soaking liquid. Measure out 3/4 cup of the liquid and add it to the daikon juices. Add enough water to the daikon juice and mushroom soaking liquid to make 3½ cups. Add this liquid to the daikon in the pot. Set aside.

4. Trim away the mushroom stems and then finely chopped the caps. You should have about 3/4 cup. Set aside.

5. Heat up the 1 tablespoon of oil in a medium skillet over medium high heat. Add the mushroom, stirring, for about 45 seconds until aromatic. Sprinkle in the 1/4 teaspoons salt, sugar, and soy sauce. Cook, for about 2 minutes, until there is little liquid remaining and the mushroom is sizzling a bit. Add the scallion and cilantro, cook for about 30 seconds more to develop the flavor, then remove from the heat. Set aside.

6. Bring the pot of daikon to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat to simmer. Cover and cook for 5 minutes. Add the mushroom mixture and let simmer for another 5 minutes. Remove from the heat. Whisk in rice flour in 4 batches, doing your best to incorporate the flour to avoid large lumps. In the final addition of flour, switch to a wooden spoon as the batter will stiff and thick (you can stick a spoon into the pot).

7. Oil a high sided, 9-inch wide round cake pan. Add the dumpling batter, spreading it out to fill the pan. Smooth out the top with a spatula, dipping it into water, as needed.

8. Steam over boiling water for 40 to 60 minutes, replenishing the water as necessary. The radish cake is done with a toothpick inserted comes out relatively clean. Cool on a rack completely before using.

9. To unmold the daikon radish cake, run a knife around the edge and then cut a small piece. Wedge a dinner knife of spatula into the cake and then lift it up from the pan. The first piece and cut is the hardest. Beyond that, it’s easy and the cake should lift off the pan without a hitch.

10. You can eat the radish cake as is, but I love to panfry pieces of it. Cut the cake anyway you want, into thick slices like 1/2-inch thick dominos, 1-inch cubes, whatever. (You can refrigerate the cake, up to a week, slicing and frying right before eating.)

11. To panfry, coat a large skillet with oil and heat over medium-high heat. Add the radish cake slices, with one their large flat sides down. Let them fry, undisturbed, for about 4 minutes, until crisp and golden brown. They’ll stick at first but will eventually release. Turn them over to brown the other sides. Serve hot with a soy sauce and chile garlic sauce.

Shanghai Dumpling King’s Sugar Egg Puffs Recipe (Bai Tang Sha Weng)

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These deep-fried puffed dumplings are one of the best things I’ve eaten in a long time. I tasted them on Saturday at Shanghai Dumpling King (3319 Balboa Street, between 34th and 35th) in the Outer Richmond in San Francisco. My friend Linda and I went there for the Shanghai soup dumplings, which were stellar, but we came away with this ‘new’ discovery. Sugar egg puffs are an ethereal cross between a cream puff and doughnut. They are deep fried wonders and not greasy whatsoever.

The young waitress paraded the fried sugar egg puffs (misspelled on the menu as “suger egg puff” in the dessert section) around the small restaurant on a tray and we were instantly taken in. We didn’t want them with the savories, but as soon as we finished all the dumplings, Linda asked the waitress, “Can we get those things fresh and hot?” The waitress obliged and Linda nearly burnt her tongue as she bit into the crisp, steamy hot puff.

Slanted Door’s Hue Rice Dumplings Recipe (Banh Xep Chay)

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I know you’ll think me crazy, but to mark the release of Asian Dumplings this week, I made a new dumpling. It’s one that I can’t get out of my mind. Every time I’ve ordered the Hue rice dumplings at Charles Phan’s Slanted Door restaurant in San Francisco, I’m tickled by their dainty appearance and rich mung bean and caramelized shallot flavor. The garnish of rich scallion oil and spicy soy sauce imparts extra plush and savory qualities. The dumplings are slightly chewy and soft and a bit translucent, a result of the wrapper being made from rice flour and tapioca starch. Slanted Door names these morsels Hue rice dumplings as they are similar to a tapioca-based Hue dumpling called banh bot loc, a classic dumpling from the central region of Vietnam, which many associate with the former imperial city of Hue. (For a banh bot loc recipe, see Asian Dumplings, page 147).

But the restaurant’s dumpling is actually more akin to a rice and tapioca starch dumpling called banh xep (“baan sehp”), which literally means “folded dumpling,” or turnover. Semantics aside, the Slanted Door’s rice dumpling is a delicious Vietnamese and vegan snack. Meat lovers won’t feel shorted whatsoever.