Chinese Pork Dumplings

Finally, I have made chinese dumplings, successfully! 

These were really great, I impressed myself! Now I won't lie, I had a little help with a sous-chef (thank you) but the actual idea of these parcels is very simple.

Firstly, all you need for the dumpling dough is plain-flour and hot water... what could be easier? 

Secondly, you don't even need to cook the filling separately, just put all the ingredients in a bowl, then add 2tsp's to make each dumpling and cook together. 

The only thing to bare in mind with these dumplings is that they are time consuming, especially if its your first time making them. As rolling out each dumpling and forming them takes some time. With practice though, i'm sure it would become a lot quicker. They are also 100% worth the effort! 

I learnt from a little cafe near Fudan University in Shanghai, to serve dumplings simply, with a mixture of soy sauce and dried chilli flakes. 

The recipe I have taken from Ken Hom because he is awesome. While we are on that topic, I would like to recommend a program to watch: "Eat, Drink, Cook China", with Ken and my favourite Ching-He Huang. It allows you to experience the real China, exploring the different areas with their own specific tastes, flavours and cooking styles. It helped me to remember my journey through China and thats when you know its a good program. 

Anyway, moving on to the job at hand, here is the recipe:

Dough:

- 140g/5oz Plain flour

- 125ml/4fl oz Very hot water

Stuffing:

- 110g/4oz Minced Pork 

- 75g/3oz Spinach (or chinese leaves) finely chopped

- 1 tsp Ginger, grated

- 1/2 tbsp Shaoxing rice wine (not essential, I couldn't find it in the supermarket)

- 1/2 tbsp Dark Soy sauce

- 1/2 tsp Light Soy sauce

- 1/2 tsp Salt

- 1/4 tsp Black pepper

- 1 1/2 Spring onions, finely chopped

- 1 tsp sesame oil

- 1/2 tsp sugar

- 1tbsp cold chicken stock 

Method for the Dough:

1) Mix flour and water 

2) Knead until smooth - about 8 minutes

3) Return to the bowl and cover with a clean damp towel to rest for 20 minutes

Method for Filling:

4) While the dough is resting, combine all the stuffing ingredients and mix together

Forming the dumplings:

5) After resting, knead again for a couple minutes

6) Then shape into a long sausage about 23cm long and 2.5cm diameter

7) Cut into 18 equal sized pieces 

8) Roll each into a ball and roll out to a 9cm diameter circle/pancake

9) Put the circles onto a flour surface, ready to fill.

10) Place two teaspoons of filling in the centre of each pancake and moisten one edge with water.

11) For an easy pinching method, just pinch each edge together (will resemble a small cornish pasty)

12) Another method is pleating one side (as used in the pictures) 

Cooking the dumplings:

I used two methods:

1) Ken Homs method:

Heat a large lidded frying pan with groundnut oil and add the dumplings.

Cook for two minutes

Add water and cover to simmer gently for 12 minutes.

2) Steam the dumplings using a vegetable steamer (or preferably a chinese bamboo steamer) for about 15minutes. 

Both myself and my sous chef, preferred the dumplings that were steamed (sorry Ken) as they were a bit tougher and held together well.