Pork and Chive Gyoza

When I say I have therapeutic ‘me’ time while I’m cooking…making gyozas has got to be one of the top few most therapeutic for me. It’s a little like creating pockets of food origami. All pretty yet edible. Very satisfying on many levels.

Ok, to start things off, I bought a batch of horrible gyoza wrappers. It was frozen and some were totally stuck together after defrosting. Horrible. Ech. I could have made my own gyoza skins but I wasn’t mentally prepared for that…plus I had just paid good money for those wrappers, I wasn’t about to throw in the towel on them. So I persevered…and I’m glad to say I only lost 2 of them in the battle. However, you’ll notice a little  french tip manicure look on them. Those were the frozen bits. Note to self: don’t ever buy frozen wrappers!

For the insides, I used pork mince and chinese chives. I find the oniony taste of the chives go really well with pork, adding a fresher depth of flavour to the dumplings.

To make the dumplings, place a blob of the pork mince in the middle of the wrapper.

Dip a finger into some water and run that along the edges of the wrapper before pleating the wrapper from one side. Grab a little edge of the wrapper, make a little fold by pulling it towards the left. 

The finished gyoza should have a little porky belly sticking out from the top view.

From the back view, you should have a level, flatter side.

Here’s the completed tray of dumplings…all pretty…

To cook the dumplings, place the flat side down in a frying pan with a little bit of oil. Let the bottom of the dumplings brown. Turn the heat down if it gets too brown too quickly. The dumplings char quite easily.

Once the bottoms are a nice golden brown, pour in a centimetre of hot water into the pan…yup, there’ll be lots of steam and sizzling.

Cover the pan. Gosh, I need to get a proper frying pan with a cover. A wok cover will have to do for now.

Once the water is totally evaporated and the dumplings are all nicely steamed. Remove from heat, and start cooking the next batch. Or you could just start eating…

The best accompaniment to gyozas – thinly sliced ginger…

With a mixture (50-50) of light soy sauce and chinese vinegar. My favourite is Chingkiang vinegar which has a fantastic flavour.

Dip the dumplings in the ginger-soy-vinegar mix, chomp chomp…aaahhhh. Food origami never tasted so good.

PORK AND CHIVE DUMPLINGS
Ingredients, makes about 22 dumplings

300g minced pork
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
100g chinese chives, chopped
light soy for seasoning
a light drizzle of sesame oil
white pepper

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