The Fried Dumplings

Years ago I asked my mother for her dumpling recipe.  I adapted it and made it my own and have been making it for parties year after year.  People stash them when I make them so they can eat some later, yes, I will say they are THAT good.  Here's a pic from this year's annual holiday brunch that I attend...

Japanese wontons.

1/3 lb ground pork

1/3 lb shrimp, peeled, deveined and minced

1/3 lb scallops

Blanched cabbage, Chinese or regular (4 large leaves) (called hakusai in Japanese)

2 tsp sesame oil

1.5 tsp ground fresh ginger

1 clove of garlic, minced

2 stalks of green onion, minced

4 shiitake mushrooms diced (rehydrated dry ones or fresh)

½ tsp salt

½ tsp sugar

¼ tsp white pepper

1 tbsp miso paste

1 package SQUARE wonton wrappers (about 50)



Mix all ingredients together by hand in large bowl until thoroughly mixed.



Most of the ingredients are self explanatory. The three that aren’t so simple:

• blanched cabbage – just briefly boil about 4 leaves, 5 minutes at most, and then take them out, and wring them out. As much water out as you can. Then chop them up.

• Ginger – make sure to grind this – we have a special grounding device that basically turns anything you rub on it into mush. It doesn’t have holes in it but has raised points that grind up the ginger. This is better than diced pieces of ginger! I personally hate biting into food and biting into bitter ginger! Yikes.

• Miso paste – white or red will work. My personal preference is red, mainly for miso soup purposes. It’s a little stronger in taste and less tart.



Place a heaping teaspoon of meat mixture in center of wrapper. Sometimes you will notice that one side of the wrapper has more flour on one side. This is the side that should be the interior of the dumpling, since flour plus water equals glue and that will hold it together! When you fry these, you obviously want to make sure the meat cooks all the way, but you will be surprised by how quickly the skins fry up, so make sure to not jamb pack them with meat.

Wet edges with water and fold over, creating a triangle, pressing along edge to seal.

Wrap all dumplings before cooking.

Deep fry in max 350° oil until golden.

Drain on paper towels.


Serve with sauce. The sauce may be key as well. I will take a picture of some good jarred sauce and show it here.  Or you can make sauce at home with the following:

- 3 parts soy sauce
- 1 part sriracha - chili garlic sauce
- 1 part sesame oil
- 1 part rice vinegar

Japanese Home Cooking - Croquettes

One of my favorite comfort foods of all time, the Japanese Croquette.  It was adapted by the Japanese years ago when the Dutch missionaries came and were allowed to settle in Japan.  They can be made in many shapes and sizes with a variety of fillings.  Here is one of my favorites, beef and corn!

Start by boiling cut up potatoes and frying up some onion and ground beef.  Drain the oil out of the beef mixture.  Mash up the potatoes and mix in the beef and drained canned corn or defrosted frozen corn.  Once cooled, form the croquettes into patties.  Don't forget to season the beef and pototaes!

Coat with what I call the deep frying trifecta - flour, egg, and panko.  Season the flour and egg with salt and pepper!

Here are some coated croquttes in the foreground, and uncoated in the background.

Fry 'em up one in shallow oil - the secret to no mess!  350-375 degree oil.  Just let them get golden brown, the inside is already cooked!  And dry them out on paper towels...

Bulldog sauce (tonkatsu sauce) mixed with ketchup or barbeque tastes great with these!

Enjoy!

Starting a food blog!

I can imagine that if you've ever tasted anything that has come out of my parent's kitchen then you too will be interested in the what, how, and why of the foods they cook. I am doing this so that I can make the same foods for my own family and so I will record how it's done, from the source. My mother is a master of traditional Japanese cooking, she barely uses cookbooks, does much of her cooking by taste. She grew up all over Japan, mostly in Tokyo, and was exposed to many of the great flavors of Japan. My father being a chemist is a master of experimentation in the kitchen so he's got some crazy recipes of his own that he's tried and tested over the years. He was born in North Eastern Japan in Sendai, during WWII and so his tastes veer towards great seafood but also hearty and dirty Japanese foods - what you eat when you have nothing.

As an aside, my husband, Chris and I enjoy cooking too and so I am sure I will interject here and there with some of the things we've created from our own kitchen... and our twists on our parent's recipes!

So I thought about starting from the beginning - white rice, miso soup etc... but since we've just had a baby in August, I'm jumping straight into whatever it is that is being made and being eaten in our lives.  Dig in!