Home Cooking Class

While Heidi has been visiting we have really expanded our food repertoire - including vegan (i.e. LOTS of tofu), fresh trout, and a large helping of Asian foods courtesy of Kristi's work colleagues. One of Kristi's friends has decided to provide us with an almost weekly taste of Hong Kong via various breads, noodles, and recipes that Kristi brings home from work. Another of her colleagues offered to teach us how to make Chinese Dumplings, a treat both to eat and to know how to make!

Lin and her partner, Niel, came over this week to begin our dumpling education. She and Kristi had already done all the shopping for ingredients and had decided that we would start with the basics of pork, carrot, and cabbage dumplings. Lin's partner happens to be a commercial chef in training so he kept a close eye on the operation and provided guidance on dicing, mixing, and shaping of dumplings as the night went along. Some of the interesting things we learned over the evening:

- Pork is the key ingredient in dumplings. Even in a seafood dumpling there is still likely some pork to add flavor and texture
- Dumplings are done cooking when they float in the pan of boiling water. If they don't float, they are probably stuck to the bottom.
- In China, dumplings are said to bring happiness to a family. They are very popular around Chinese New Years to help increase happiness for the family in the new year.
- It takes the making of many many dumplings before you get into a good rhythm and they start to look professional. Sometimes it may not be until the very last dumpling of the night.
- One kilo of pork goes a LONG way. Don't underestimate how many dumplings you might eat (we were told a typical man eats 40 and woman around 20), but we quickly learned that after 15-20 dumplings the untrained stomach gets to feeling quite full.

We took a few pictures of the progress, but with how fast everything progressed we didn't get nearly enough photographic documentation. I guess we'll just have to invite Lin and Neil over for another lesson!