Winter Solstice Wontons

Wontons wrapped "envelope" style that are ready to be boiled...

The shortest day of the year has come and gone with winter solstice.

It's also a day for families to gather for dinner.

I was inspired by a friend who posted pictures of wontons he had made a few weeks ago and I decided to do the same.

The end result is delicious wontons!

He used minced pork with watercress and mushrooms, but suggested I could make whatever filling I wanted.

Tonight I made one by combining minced pork, finely chopped cabbage, chives, mushrooms and shrimp. They were mixed with some salt, soy sauce, sesame oil and Shaoxing wine.

I didn't really know how to wrap wontons and did it the "envelope" style... but taste-wise they were delicious, the crunchiness of the cabbage and chives and the shrimp added more texture. They were light and not hard to eat a lot of them!

I've just Googled other ways to wrap the wontons and can't wait to try to wrap them again...

Picture of the Day: Handmade Dumplings

Twenty dumplings filled with minced pork, chives, mushrooms and ginger

I made more dumplings again yesterday and resolved to use some good quality ingredients. I headed to City Super, a high-end supermarket that specializes mostly in Japanese ingredients.

Originally I was only going to get the wrappers because they are refrigerated -- the other supermarkets I have visited put the wrappers in the freezer for some reason. Once they defrost, they are surely soggy? And I've tried the wrappers in the wet market, but they are on the thick side.

I saw that minced pork was 20 percent off and bought half a kilogram that had gone through a very fine grinder. Because it was all one solid pink colour, I couldn't tell if there was any fat in it. So I went to Wellcome to buy more pork with a bit more fat in it as dumplings need that for flavour. It was also half the price...

At the wet market I bought chives, mushrooms and ginger.

It turns out over 750 grams of pork, mixed with chives and finely chopped mushrooms and grated garlic are enough to make 60 dumplings. I followed my mother's instructions and after making four of them I boiled two to check the taste. The pork was on the very lean side (ie not much taste), and unfortunately I ran out of sesame oil so I added more olive oil and Shaoxing wine for flavour.

This time I endeavored to try another method of wrapping them and watched a few YouTube videos to get the gist of how to wrap them in different ways. In the end I settled on making pleats on one side much like gyoza. The wrappers I bought were quite thin so my wrapping wasn't very even, but improved as I went along.

I can't wait to make another batch of dumplings again -- this time with a bit more fattier pork -- because I still have another 60 wrappers in the refrigerator!

Picture of the Day: Homemade Dumplings

The wrapped up dumplings ready to be frozen!

Earlier this week I met some dim sum chefs who showed me how to make things like har gao (shrimp dumplings), chive dumplings, soup dumplings, steamed rice rolls with minced pork and siu mai or pork and shrimp dumplings.

They made it look so easy, but when I tried to copy them, my dumplings looked clumsy and obviously amateur!

I immediately gained a new appreciation for dim sum -- that each piece is crafted by someone by hand.

The experience of making dim sum inspired me to make dumplings today -- the northern Chinese ones that are boiled.

It reminded me of when I was in Beijing and my Chinese teacher taught me and my then boyfriend how to make them from scratch. I just remember how exhausted we were after a good part of the day was spent making the fillings and then the dough, wrapping them and then finally getting to eat them!

The first batch of cooked dumplings! Yum!

I skipped trying to make the dough and focused on the pork and chive filling. I read through a few recipes and then went to the wet market to buy ingredients -- including the wrappers.

At the wet market I didn't see any ground pork so I went to the supermarket to buy it and was shocked to find we had to scoop it up ourselves into a plastic bag -- how unhygienic is that?!

The recipe called for a teaspoon of minced ginger but I put much more than that in there, and didn't have any sugar so I put a teaspoon of honey in it!

In the end I almost wrapped one cattie of wrappers (only about five left), so it pretty much worked out. The dumplings were put on plates and then left in the freezer before transferring them to a ziploc bag to prevent them from sticking together.

For dinner I ate a dozen of them and they were delicious!! I was glad I put a lot of ginger in there to perk up the flavours, but also the fresh chives were a nice addition too. The wrappers held up and were quite thin.

Now I can have dumplings whenever I want and wrapping them didn't take too long -- about an hour and a half? There's no excuse to eat store-bought ones now...