Dumpling wrapper

Beef Dumpling

My dumpling fascination has come to a new level, I like freshly made dumpling wrapper or dumpling skin. It tastes so much better than the ready-made ones. I have the almost transparent dumpling skin recipe from a magazine, but it is not working!! The dough was way too gooey and there is no way I can knead it. Either the food writer is not the cook himself/herself or there might be some misinterpretation from Chinese to English version of the recipe. Although the recipe is written in English and Chinese, there might have been errors in between. Or maybe the some people are just not generous to share the right recipe.

Hence, its time to experiment again!

This experiment is just like playing play-doh.. I feel like a kid in the kitchen. I had this silky white dough as in pristine white. Quite happy with it, at least if my dumpling skin fail, I had fun!

Objective: to make transparent dumpling skin

The result of my dumpling skin is a little bit transparent, but not transparent enough as I wanted it to be. I realized that it is the tapioca starch which is making it transparent; so next time, I will decrease the amount of cornstarch

Posting this experiment for my record, so that I could come back and from time to time and check where did I went wrong and avoid having the same mistake again.

Filling

¼ kg. Minced beef

1 cup shredded cabbage

1 Tablespoon flour

Salt

Dumpling skin
1 cup corn starch
1 cup tapioca starch
1 tspt salt
1 Tablespoon shortening
1 cup boiling water

Procedure:

Filling: Mix the ingredients altogether and pulse for 2 minutes using a blender or food processor until the mixture is fine and well combined.

Dumpling Skin:
In a mixing bowl, put corn starch, tapioca starch and salt, add boiling water slowly while mixing with chopstick or with the wooden spoon handle, continue mixing until the starches come altogether forming a dough.

Set it aside until the mixture is cool enough to handle.

Bring mixture altogether while still warm and knead adding the shortening by portion until well combined. Dough becomes silky white and elastic.

Shape the dough like a log, roll it making longer until about 1 inch in diameter.

Cut the dough into small portions and roll it with the hand; achieving a marble size dough.

In a slightly floured surface, flatten the dough as much as you can with a small rolling pin. Separate each skin with a sprinkle of flour.

Wrap : To wrap the dumpling, put a teaspoon in each skin and seal the skin by pressing the edges creating pleats.

Cook: Steam the dumplings for 15 minutes in a bamboo steamer.

Make the Sauce: Mix soy sauce, lemon and few drops of sesame oil.

Serve Hot with soy sauce.

conclusion: lessen the amount of cornstarch next time.
texture: a little bit stretchy when cooked.
taste: good, but it can be better

Chicken Siew Mai

We love dimsum! I can repeat that a hundred times in this blog. Because we love it so much, I am perfecting my wrapper for these lovely dimsum recipes. Siew Mai is a frequent menu on the table for us and not as snacks as dimsum supposedly, but for us it is as good as a meal. I can eat as plenty as I can as long as there is still space in my tummy!

I’ve been buying dumpling wrapper in the supermarket but these days they run out of stock and it has been out-of-stock for awhile now. To my disappointment of not finding these dumpling wrapper, I am in a quest for perfecting my dumpling wrapper. The challenge is to find the right ingredients.

I am so intrigued with these dumplings with wrappers which look like almost transparent. I found the recipe but I can’t find the right flour. I finally found the recipe from a magazine; the ingredient that makes it green is spinach puree, now I know! The recipe calls for potato starch and Tang flour which I can’t find it in anywhere. So the next thing in mind is to substitute with what I have and see if it works. Yes it did but the wrappers are not that transparent as they should.

For the record, I have to post here what I’ve done for me not repeat the same mistake; in my quest for perfecting dumpling wrapper. It took a tedious job to it but once I got used to the hang of it, everything comes fast. First it was so thick and big, and finally I made it very thin but it took me a lot of testing 2 pieces each before wrapping all the fillings. At the end of this experiment, I’m already half full. It could have been easier if the recipe is well expound step-by-step but it was not.

Note: if you can find dumpling wrappers in the supermarket, no need to do the hassle of making your own wrapper, but if you are just as curious how to make it as I am, then go ahead, do it. Note that it will take your patience at first but once you have done it once, next time would be a lot easier!

Ingredients:

Filling:

¼ kg. Minced chicken

1 Tablespoon cornstarch

¼ Teaspoon sesame oil

Salt and pepper

Combine all the ingredients in a mixing bowl until thoroughly mixed and set aside.

Make the Wrapper:

100 g. potato starch

100 g. All purpose flour

½ cup water

50 g. spinach

Procedure:

In a blender, put spinach and water, blitz for few seconds until pureed. Transfer the mixture to a saucepan and bring to a boil. Let stand for 3 minutes to cool down a little bit but it should not be completely cooled.

In a mixing bowl, add potato starch and flour, add pureed spinach little by little while mixing the flour using a chopstick until the mixture comes altogether and forms into a dough. Knead the dough on a lightly floured board until smooth and elastic.

Divide the dough into 3. Work on one part and cover wrap the other two parts with a kitchen towel to avoid drying up. Shape the dough into a sausage-like and flatten with a rolling pin flouring the dough on both sides every time you roll the rolling pin. Using a Chef’s Ring, or cookie cutter cut the thin dough to form small thin circles.

Place 1 teaspoon of the filling in each of the wrapper and form into a siew mai.

Steam in a bamboo steamer for 10 minutes.

Serve with soy sauce with calamansi and few drops of sesame oil.

Cook’s note:

I could have used the pasta machine but I realized it too late and was lazy to assemble the machine.

Cook’s review: the wrapper has a mild background flavor compared to the ready-made frozen wrappers. They are a little bit sticky yet firm and still soft when cooked.

Beef Spring roll (Beef Lumpia)

Beef Spring Roll

Ingredients:

¼ Kg. ground beef

1 red pepper (chopped finely)

1 large onion (chopped finely)

3 cloves garlic (chopped finely)

2 Tablespoons flour

1 egg

4 teaspoons soy sauce

Salt and pepper

Spring roll wrappers

Oil for deep frying

Procedure:

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl and chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. This allows the flavors to blend.

Place 1 teaspoon each in every spring roll wrapper and roll up. Seal the edges with water.

Fry for 10 minutes in medium heat. The oil should not be very hot so that the wrappers don’t burn straight away, leaving the meat uncooked in the middle. To test the right temperature of the oil, while heating the oil for frying, dip a wooden spoon into the oil. If it starts to bubble, it is hot enough. Fry until golden brown.

Mutton Sio Mai

Mutton Sio Mai

We are a big fan of dim sum restaurants and once in a while at home we crave for it. The key to a tasty dim sum dumplings is to cook with a bamboo steamer. I have tried doing it in my metal steamer, there’s nothing like it with a bamboo steamer! It’s the flavor and the aroma that has stucked into it that gives a special touch. In my quest to find a bamboo steamer, I’ve been to china town, but wasn’t successful. I’ve seen huge gigantic bamboo steamer which is not what I’m looking to buy! Not until now, a colleague of hubby was kind enough to buy it for us, and we are very pleased to have a medium sized bamboo steamer in four layers. We just got it last night and we wanted to try it right away! Just in time, I have frozen dumpling wrapper which have been sitting in the freezer for quite some time now, But the available minced meat I have is mutton and mutton only! I haven’t had mutton sio mai in my life, but that didn’t leave me any much choice but to try making mutton sio mai. My imagination had worked fantastically with the flavors, hence I put spices that I haven’t used with chicken or pork dumplings. I added chili onion, mushrooms which worked out just well!

Ingredients:
¼ Kg minced mutton
1 can button mushrooms (diced finely)
1 large white onion (diced finely)
1 red chili (diced finely)
1 green chili (diced finely)
6 Tbsp. Soy sauce
1 Tbsp. sesame oil
2 Tbsp. corn starch

Soy Sauce:
¼ C. Soy sauce
2 Calamanci (small lime)
½ tsp. Sesame Oil

Procedure:

Prepare all the ingredients and place everything in a mixing bowl. Mix vigorously with your hand, you may wish to use plastic gloves, as I did, until all the flavors have been blended together. Let it stand for about 10 minutes that the flavors will develop nicely.

Place 1 teaspoon of meat mixture at the center of each dumpling wrapper, pat with water around the meat using your finger. Gather the edges of the wrapper up forming pleated raffles. Tap on the table to flatten the bottom of the siomai and squeeze a little just before the edge of the wrapper, leaving a little meat exposed. Do this until all the meat mixtures have been wrapped, then you are ready to steam.

To use the bamboo steamer, place about an inch deep of water in a large woke, taking care that the water should not get out of the rims of the steamer. This is important to keep the steam inside the bamboo steamer. Bring the water to boil and reduce the heat when it is bubbling already. Brush with the base of the bamboo steamer to avoid the dumplings sticking onto it. Place the dumplings in each base keeping a little distance in between each dumpling.



Stack the bamboo steamer over the simmering water and cover the last layer.



Cook for 15 minutes. Serve with soy sauce.

This siomai is just perfect to our taste, and I shall do it again! It’s even better than what I have tasted in the food court of KLCC which was a little bit commercialized, I should say.

Hubby was so impatient infusing flavor and aroma with the new bamboo steamer, he steamed by adding onion, garlic to the water instead of just plain water, I find it a brilliant idea. Hence, now we have a bamboo steamer that smells like it is used since a long time.

I have posted Chicken Siomai long time back, say 2 years ago, when we were in Angola. I did it quite differently as I have to settle what I can find there, and I even used bread crumbs coz I cant find cornstarch in the supermarket, and I remember there is no available sio mai wrapper there, so I used the spring roll wrapper instead and cut them into small pieces. Those were the days when I was living in (T.I.A.) which means “This Is Africa”. I tell you, it was not easy!