A DUMPLING BIBLE
Dumplings are so popular — even far beyond China — that they seem nearly incapable of surprise. At least until you enter One Hundred Kinds of Dumpling Garden, as Helen You’s New York restaurant is known in Chinese.
Can there be 100 kinds of dumplings? Indeed, as flipping through her new cook book or her Dumpling Galaxy menu quickly reveals. There are the classics You grew up with, then meat-free “green” dumplings, recipes with “faraway flavors” like spicy beef dumplings “that pair well with a cold beer”, and dessert dumplings.
In fact, You insists there are many more.
“Dumplings are made to be customized,” says the woman who invented succulent pouches of lamb with summer squash and others with muscular dried octopus. “This book will give you all the confidence you need to explore your own dumpling galaxy.”
She’s so confident in her confidence-building, in fact, that the first recipe she offers in the book is a doozy: pork soup dumplings (xiao long bao). I’ve taken a few dumpling classes myself, usually at Laowai 101 events around Chinese New Year. The tidbits I create are generally misshapen to the point of comic (though they usually taste OK), and making little dough purses literally full of hot steamy broth has always seemed like the forgotten verse of The Impossible Dream.
Her matter-of-fact presentation of the process, however, convinces me I can do this.
It’s not that You takes the task lightly: Half the recipe is cautionary tale, from what can go wrong in the cooking to what can go wrong in the eating.
“Since they have such thin skins, it’s easy to rupture them en route from the steamer to your mouth, spilling soup everywhere,” she notes. (I remember that part.) “So to eat them, carefully pick up the dumpling by its topknot with your chopsticks and rest it in a wide spoon. Take a nibble out of the side to slurp up the broth and release the heat, then eat the dumpling.”
If you have black vinegar and slivered ginger on the side, you’re good to go.
Her tips for cooking these beauties is just as no-nonsense. For example: Instead of spending hours boiling pork skin, fat and feet to make the aspic needed for the soup, she suggests using powdered gelatin for a less fatty but still flavorful result.
Before turning the reader loose in the treasure-trove of recipes, however, she offers a primer on the basics. A page titled Know Your Dumplings walks you through the differences in making boiled (easiest), steamed (more delicate) and panfried dumplings (“more difficult to cook, but they produce an irresistible crunchy fried bottom”). Wrappers, cooking times and even fillings may be dictated by the cooking method chosen. For each, she has tips on how to keep the skins from bursting — the curse of novice dumpling makers.
You may not have known that you need an empty egg carton, but that’s number two on her list of tools to have on hand. A flour-dusted egg carton allows you to tuck your raw dumplings into each slot and refrigerate them so they hold their shape. You’ll also want to have a dumpling scraper to portion the dough, an Asian-style rolling pin (Western ones are too big to do the job efficiently), a bamboo steamer and steamer insulators — cabbage leaves or parchment paper — to keep your babies from sticking to the steamer. Finally, her careful explanation of the steps and pitfalls for making wrappers for boiled, steamed and pan-fried dumplings have the comfortable aura of a grandma at your shoulder. After reading, I have no doubt that my dumplings will be pretty as a picture. (I’ve almost forgotten my chuckles over her opening assertion: “They’re also easy to make.”)
You has a cool trick for presenting her pan-fried dumplings: She cooks them in an oiled pan with a starch slurry. The result is a paperthin lacy pancake across the bottom of the pan, “connecting all the dumplings in a golden-brown disk of crackly crunch”.
Tips:
• Buy good ingredients. No amount of soy sauce can make up for sad, wilted cabbage.
• Think juicy, not greasy. At home she uses 90 percent lean red meat for a lighter filling; while restaurants may use higher fat mixes (80/20 or even 70/30) for more oomph.
• Vegetables are the real stars in any dumpling, but to avoid too much moisture, wring out watery vegetables like cabbage in a tea towel before adding to fillings. • Season lightly. • Don’t overcook. • Don’t dip right away; taste first. If dumplings are made well, they don’t need as much sauce as you probably think. Contact the writer at michaelpeters@chinadaily.com.cn Tianjin native Helen You has long attracted attention with her myriad dumplings in her adopted hometown of Flushing in Queens, New York. Now she shares recipe secrets in a new book, Mike Peters reports.