Gyoza

Inspired by Florence's beautifully crafted gyoza, I decided to try my hand at making these cute dumplings. I always remembered the way my mom and her friends would sit at the kitchen table and prepare wontons and other dumplings for soups and for frying. Those precious memories of the past are sadly faded away, nowadays we usually purchase the gyoza/wontons from T&T or from Hon's. We don't even by the wonton skins from the grocer anymore! So in rememberance of thos moments I decided we must continue on the tradition of home cooking (okay, enough ranting).

My sister isn't a big fan of green onions and is allergic to prawn/shrimp. So I made her a batch of gyoza with only beef... she appreciated it. As for the rest of the gyoza I decided against using mushrooms (since I didn't have any on-hand) and added in garlic, ginger and carrots.

Fried Ginger + Pork Gyoza

Filling
Ingredients:
- 1 cup raw pork, minced
- 1 knob of ginger, minced
- 1 clove of garlic, minced
- 1/4 cup carrot, grated
- 1/4 cup green onion, chopped

- Salt and Soya sauce, to taste

Method:

1. Fry pork, ginger and garlic together until pork has turned brown and no longer pink.

2. Once fragrant, add in the green onion and carrots.

3. Continue to mix and drain away the fat. Add in the salt and soya sauce to taste.

Gyoza Skin

Ingredients:

- 1 cup plain flour

- 2/3 cup tapioca starch

- 100ml boiling water

- 40ml cold water

- 1/4 tsp salt

- 1/3 cup shrimp, deveined and cooked

Method:

1. Combine the 2 flours and salt together in a mixing bowl.

2. Add in the boiling water and stir with a wooden spoon (or chopstick) until they resemble small flakes.

3. Incorporate the cold water and knead into a pliable dough.

4. Roll onto a floured surface and divide the dough into small (ping-pong sized) portions.

5. Use a rolling pin to flatten out dough. Use a small bowl to create circular gyoza skins (10cm in diameter).

6. Place a shrimp in the middle of the wrapper and then continue by adding the filling.

7. Fold wrapper in half and close edges (to prevent the filling from spilling out)

8. Heat some oil in a frying pan and cook gyoza until nicely browned.

9. Eat with japanese vinegar, dumpling dipping sauce, chilli... basically whatever you wish.

I rather enjoyed eating these gyoza. They turned out very crisp and flavourful, unlike the frozen ones from the market. It seems that when you thaw the frozen dumplings and then fry them, they retain some liquid within the dumpling and turn out mushy, soggy and just plain gross. Homemade dumplings are seriously the way to go... try it and you'll be impressed.