Dumplings...

I've clearly been very lax with the recipes and cooking lately - I have lacked inspiration and inclination, more than anything. But today Kat got a craving for Chinese dumplings, and her talking about them got me craving them too! I promised her the recipe my Mum and I have used for years for steamed pork buns...actually I'm only listing the dough here because Kat is vegetarian, and also because I don't think you need to be limited by the idea of bbq pork in dumplings...there are just so many possibilities for what you could tuck inside these tasty treats!

Chinese Steamed Buns/Dumplings

3 cups of flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tbsp sugar
60g lard/vegetable shortening (if you're vegetarian)
3/4 cup warm water
1 tsp white vinegar
1/2 tsp salt

Sift the flour and baking powder into a bowl, stir in the sugar and salt. Rub in the fat, then add the liquids and knead to a fairly soft dough. Cover and rest for 1/2 an hour.

Divide dough into 10 - 12 portions and mould each one into a smooth ball. Roll out on a lightly floured surface to a 10 cm circle and moisten the edges slightly with water put a heaped teaspoonful of the (cold) filling in the centre of the circle and gather the edges together folding and pleating to make a neat join. Twist dough to seal and make into a wee round filled bun.
Place each bun, join-side up on a small square of greaseproof paper.
Place in a bamboo steamer, not too close together and steam for 10 - 15 minutes (adding a little vinegar to the water will help to keep the buns white).
Serve warm.


(this picture isn't mine, but gives you an idea of what they should look like. You could make them smaller if you wanted to, I guess).

I am starving - I'm off to raid the fridge and pantry!

Enjoy

(NB: Recipe adapted from Australian Women's Weekly Chinese Cookery from about 25 years ago!)

Lunch on the move

Sandwiches and I have always had a difficult relationship. While there’s something to be said for a sandwich made fresh with a piece of delicious fresh crusty bread, slathered in garlicky mayonnaise and a delicious filling, unfortunately, this is not the normal state of the sandwich. Frankly I would rather go hungry than eat a sandwich made yesterday with stale, sliced, processed bread, which has turned soggy with the inevitable slices of tomato. Unfortunately, when you’re traveling and have to rely on road-side service stations for food, this is the type of sandwich you’re likely to get. This week I endured a 7 hour bus trip down to London (and the matching endurance bus-trip home the next day, mores the fun) and to make sure that I wasn’t relying on soggy, stale sandwiches for lunch, I took my own packed lunch. And when you’re packing your own lunch, why restrict yourself to sandwiches? There are any number of other similarly portable foods which are infinitely more delicious and interesting than a tired old sandwich. I sought inspiration from Asia.

Fresh spring rolls were one of my favourite discoveries after visiting Thailand for the first time. Before going there I’d known spring rolls only as those wonderfully crispy wee packages perfect for nibbling (or scoffing in my case) with a beer or wine before a meal. Fresh spring rolls (which I think actually hail from Vietnam, rather than Thailand) with their springy texture and fresh flavours, were a revelation. One of the best things about fresh spring rolls is that they are so versatile – you can put any number of things inside their chewy, glutinous wrapper. If you’re seafood inclined, prawns would be a traditional filling, and although I don’t eat it, I think crab meat (perhaps with some avocado and cucumber…just to be truly unoriginal) would probably be delightful.

My spring rolls on the bus were vegetarian – a spicy mixture of cooked mushrooms with bean sprouts and yellow capscicum. The recipe for the filling is below – vary the quantities (which, if I’m completely honest, are entirely approximate anyway) to satisfy the number of hungry eaters you have, and if you like it spicier, then by all means add more chilli! I also (as you can see below) used rice vermicelli in my rolls as well as the vegetables. I do this to make the rolls more filling – more appropriate, say, for a lunch meal. But if you were making these as a pre-dinner appetizer, then they would be just as lovely with only the mushrooms and crunchy vege. It’s really your call.

Spicy Mushroom Fresh Spring Rolls

300g (ish) Portobello mushrooms, sliced
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 tsp chopped/grated ginger
½ onion, finely chopped
1 fresh red chilli, chopped (or 1 tsp sweet chilli sauce)
1 tsp sugar (only add this if you haven’t used sweet chilli sauce)
2 tsp soy sauce
10(ish? Rather depends how much filling you stuff inside each one. If you’re greedy like me, you will have less rolls but they’ll be fatter!) Dry round rice paper sheets
Chopped coriander
Bean sprouts
Cold cooked rice vermicelli noodles
Sliced cucumber/capscicum or carrot

Heat some sesame oil in a fry pan and add mushrooms. Once they have started to soften, add garlic, ginger and chilli. Fry until mushrooms are mostly cooked. Add soy and sugar (or sweet chilli sauce if you’re using that instead) and stir for a minute.
Cool.
Soften a rice paper wrapper in hot water, pat dry. Place a spoonful of the mushrooms, some noodles, coriander and vege just off centre of the wrapper. Fold bottom of wrapper up over filling. Fold in the sides and then roll up to enclose.

Dip in sweet chilli, sweet soy sauce or even peanutty sauce. They will keep in a chilled container for several hours…without going soggy!

Tasty Tortillas

To go with last night's refried beans, here's my homemade tortilla recipe. They are super easy and so much softer and more filling than the bought kind (and, incidentally, much much cheaper). These are flour tortillas - I've never made the corn kind, so if you had a recipe to share on that front, I'd love to give it a shot!

Flour Tortillas

2 cups plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/4 c oil
3/4-1 c tepid water

Mix flour, b.p and salt together in a bowl. Stir in the oil and mix through until it sort of looks crumbly. Add enough water to make a soft dough. Turn out and knead until smooth and elastic (about 3-4 mins). Put in a plastic bag and leave somewhere warmish for about half an hour. Cut into pieces (depending on how big you want your tortillas - I usually make about 10 with this amount). Roll a piece into thin circle - about dinner plate size if you can get it that big. Fry in a hot, dry, non-stick pan for a couple of mins each side...until they are just starting to get brown spots. Keep warm and soft in a clean teatowel.

These freeze well if you don't get through the whole lot at dinner.

Bean Fiesta

Mexican-inspired food is some of my favourite food...I love feasting on bowls of chilli and guacamole and salsa and fresh, warm tortilla chips and soft, fluffy burittos. It was one of my favourite meals when I was growing up - always a family dinner with all the various bits and pieces on the table, everyone helping themselves and generally making a very happy, content mess. But I have to say, going out for Mexican food has typically proven a real disappointment. Now, I'm sure if I went out for a Mexican meal in Mexico, or even in Texas or some of the other southern states of the USA, then I'm sure it would be a totally different experience, but in NZ (and so far in the UK) it's pretty disappointing. I always leave the restaurant feeling faintly dissatisfied and feeling pretty sure I could have made better at home. One area in which I think this is particularly true is in the refried beans realm. At most restaurants I've been to, refried beans have been a sad, grey, tasteless blob on the side of the plate - an after-thought that is supposed to make you feel as if you are getting some kind of 'authentic' Latin meal complete with 'authentic' accompaniments. I'm a big fan of the bean - chickpeas, kidney beans, haricot, lima, black-eyed beans...all good stuff - but even I struggle to get through the refried beans at restaurants. And I always feel so sorry for the beans...they could be so much more than that!

This is my recipe for refried beans and it bears little resemblance to the restaurant variety. Even former refried-bean haters will be convinced by this, and even dogged meat-eaters will come back for seconds. It's great served hot a-top tortilla chips, stuffed into a taco, wrapped in a buritto or piled on top of fluffy rice, slathered with guacamole and/or sour cream and with a sprinkling of grated cheese. But the leftovers are also delicious served cold as a dip with vege sticks and more tortilla chips. I hope you love it as much as I do, and hope that you can convert a refried bean hater or two...! Let the bean revolution begin, ole!

Refried Beans

2 Tbsp oil
1 onion
1-2 cloves of garlic
1 green capsicum (optional)
1 1/2 c red kidney beans (either use some you've soaked and cooked yourself, or a 400g can)
1 generous tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp oreganum
1/2-1 tsp ground chilli (or to taste)
1 tsp paprika (smoked paprika is good for a change sometimes)
About 1/2 c of water (if you used your own cooked beans, keep some of the cooking water for this)
2 Tbsp tomato paste
1 Tbsp wine vinegar
salt and sugar to taste

Chop onions, garlic and capsicum. Saute in oil gently. Add spices and fry for a further minute. Add the beans, tomato paste, vinegar and warm through. Mash with a potato masher (or if you prefer a smoother texture, stick it in the blender. I personally like it a bit chunkier, but to each her own!) then add as much liquid as you want to get a soft mixture - about the same consistency as hummus. Add salt and sugar to taste, and even a splash of lime or lemon if you fancy. If you have beans prepared (I keep a stash of pre-soaked and boiled beans in the freezer for this purpose...pour over boiling water to defrost and away you go) you can make this in under 10 minutes.

All it needs are some of the accompaniments listed above, plus a nice cold Corona or Sol lager with lime and you're good to go!