Chinese Dumplings or 角子

I have a cleaner lady who comes over once a week to my place. One day, I suggested to her that she could teach me how to make 角子. She was delighted to do so, seeing my interest in the most popular food of her homeland. She comes from the Northern part of China, terrible I for not remembering which province she is from. Even though I speak Mandarin, albeit not extremely well, but good enough, we often have problems communicating. Thus, that was how I ended up with a wrong ingredient but it was still do-able. She asked for 白菜 & I bought cabbage. Don't ask me why but I always have this thing in my mind that the veg within the dumplings is cabbage.

This is the recipe as follows. She was very fast and I had to make sure she waited for me to jot down some notes before she could move on to the next step. Looking at the words I was putting down on paper, she commented that she knew not what I was writing. Haha. She doesn't understand English at all, except for picking up some common words like 'hello', 'bye bye', and 'pizza' during her one year stay in Singapore. I'm sure she knows a few more than the ones I mentioned.

Ingredients for dough:
4 cups plain flour
1-1/4 cup water
(form the above into a dough & knead till it becomes a nice round ball)

This part I forgot to take a photo of, but she made a hole in the middle of the dough like a donut, and then broke off a part to form this long snake as shown in picture below. She then proceeded to break off little pieces slightly bigger than a 50 cents Singapore coin, and flattened them into small round pieces.

I realized too that I did not take photos of her using the rolling pin to shape the little round 'coins' into very thin skins. I was busy making dumplings at this stage and hands were all covered in flour.

Ingredients for filling :

300g minced pork
spring onion
half a cabbage

Method -

1. Season minced pork with light soy sauce, salt & 3 dsp* of cooking oil.
2. Shred cabbage finely & season with salt. (to draw out excess water)
3. Cut spring onions very finely & add to seasoned pork.

It's the first time I've seasoned minced pork with cooking oil. According to her, it makes the meat more tender. Not too sure about that fact.

First you place some meat filling into the middle of the skin.

Then you close over so that the ingredients are not overflowing.

Next you place dumpling to rest on your index finger, and with both thumbs, press on the opening to seal it tight.

Completed.

I did this whole plate of dumplings. So proud of myself. She said I was a fast learner. I told her it was because she was there to guide me. Not so confident if I had to do it all alone. But I must try it on my own one of these days. Wrapping it wasn't a problem. The intimidating part was rolling out the skins, but thankfully I managed to get it right.

This is my girl's dinner. There were leftover skins & I decided to make them into mee hoon kueh.
It is her favourite form of the handmade noodle that you get at the ban mian stall. She loved the mee hoon kueh and didn't touch the dumplings. I think it was because of the meat within (she doesn't like meat much). But anyhow, great to know that, and also now I know how easy it is to make them, we can do it at home when the craving for ban mian calls. :)

I enjoyed my dumpling lesson very much, not just in learning how to make them, but also in enjoying the end result. I didn't count how many we ended up with but it was at least 50, if not more. I gave a plateful of them to a neighbour and still have a plateful in the freezer, ready for when I need them.

I apologize for not being too detailed in my recipes. I somehow forget that non-Asians do read my blog. For Jori - You can boil a pot of water then put them in when water has come to a rolling boil, and cook them that way. Discard water & serve. You can also cook them in a pot of clear soup & enjoy them with vegetables as I have done above. I know that in the Western diet, clear soup is not something that is common and my mil doesn't like it, because to her, it tastes like water and salt, but in most Asian diets, clear soup is the way to go. Not sure if I have done a post on clear chicken broths etc, but I might do another one soon, so watch out for it.
*dsp = dessertspoons (The ones we use to eat rice)

Bak Chang

This is one food item that I never learned to make from my grandma that I do regret. I remember as a kid, she used to make them every 5th month of the lunar calendar when the Chinese celebrate the Rice Dumpling Festival. And we could eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I love zhang or 棕 子 (glutinous rice dumplings). And never tire of them. My favourite of all is Nonya zhang. The meat is sweet and there's very little fat.

However, as I grew older, I ate it less. It gives me indigestion and it's fattening. Hehe. So once in a blue moon, I pamper myself with it. This lot I happened to pick up last weekend while I was waiting for my take-out from Aston's and as it took forever, I took a wander to Kim Choo's a couple of doors away and picked up a couple.

Do you love zhang too? What fillings do you go for?