Gyoza soup

Winter hasn`t officially come yet, but I`ve been starting making soups these days. One of them is this gyoza (Japanese dumpling) soup and this was my first time making it because I usually pan-fry them. Ever heard this?

"Who doesn`t love dumplings?"

For the soup, I prepared a very simple dashi (Japanese stock) using dried shiitake mushroom and dried kombu (sea kelp). Unlike the shiitake mushrooms, kombu can be used readily during the boiling, so it will appear later in the process.

According to the instruction, the mushrooms have to be rehydrated for at least 3 hours (overnight in the fridge works best) to help release the umami and soften the mushrooms. What I usually do is I immerse 4 or 5 dried mushrooms in 2-3 cups of water, place a mug or this Rilakkuma tea cup atop to keep them under the water level and let it sit while I prepare the other ingredients or go out for shopping. Or check out your new posts. Or sleep. 

Now let`s work on the filling. When I prepare pan-fried gyoza, I want the filling to be flavorful so I used more ingredients in it. But, since this one comes with soup, I liked the filling to be simpler and lighter in taste and let the soup enrich them.

Chopping time, everyone. Chop up this maitake mushrooms....

...cabbage (in the bowl-forgot to take the picture)...and this garlic chives (nira in Japanese). If you asked me like 7 years ago what that was in my hand, I would super confidently answer, "Grass.". Lesson for me: Sometimes it`s good to look back and see how much we`ve learned all these years.

Back to the filling where we need one more thing, konnyaku noodles. Usually konnyaku needs to be blanched in hot water for a few minutes, but I just go with hot water from my tap. You don`t have to be like me, you know that. 

And to make life easier, use a kitchen scissors and snip the noodles up.

Combine all those ingredients in a bowl and lightly season the mixture with salt and pepper, if you want to.

The wrapping is my least favorite part, but I know it`s worth the effort. For the wrapping steps, please see here.

This time I didn`t bother pleating the edge. Next time I will...I think.

Alright, the wrapped gyoza is done and let`s move on to the soup.

Heat a bit of oil over medium heat and saute garlic and chili until they are fragrant.

Pour in the mushroom stock, chop up the mushrooms, and throw them in the soup.

Add dried kombu to the soup, red chili flakes (if you want it to be red and spicy), chopped carrot to enhance the aroma (no picture here, sorry), and season with salt and pepper. Let it simmer for a while. 

My soup was so frothy I almost thought I added soap too! But I believe I didn`t (I didn`t!), so I just used my skimmer to make the soup clearer.

By the way, this stage is where you should be done with the seasoning and stirring, because after this....

...we need to add the dumpling and stirring the soup with the dumplings in is not a very good idea, unless you are fine with having a bowl of soup with your dumplings torn apart. Also, you can not keep leftover because the dumplings will absorb the soup while getting mushier and mushier. I learned these lessons in a hard way.

But, I had nothing to complain about because I was too busy slurping and chewing all the goodness in this bowl. The gyoza were so soft that it kept slipped away from my chopsticks and obviously I should have used a spoon instead. But even so, I finished this soup in my bowl within seconds! And just for an idea, I think adding the pan-fried gyoza in the soup will work fantastic too!

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GYOZA SOUP

Makes 2-3 cup soup

Ingredients:

#For soup

5 dried shiitake mushrooms

1 dried kombu (sea kelp)

2-3 cups water

1 tbs olive oil 

4 cloves garlic

2-3 dried chili (remove seeds for milder heat)

1 tbs red chili flake

1 carrot

Salt and pepper to taste

#For gyoza

Gyoza wrappers

Cabbage

Maitake mushrooms

Garlic chives

Konnyaku noodles

Salt and pepper (optional)

Method:

1. Rehydrate 4 or 5 dried mushrooms in 2-3 cups of water and let it sit for several hours while preparing the other ingredients.

2. For the filling, mix chopped cabbage, garlic chives, and konnyaku noodles in a bowl. Lightly season with salt and pepper if necessary.

3. Place 1-2 tsp of the filling on a gyoza wrapper, wrap into half-moon shape, and seal the edges with water.

4. Heat a bit of oil over medium heat and saute garlic and chili until they are fragrant. 

5. Pour in the mushroom stock, chop up the mushrooms, and throw them in the soup.

6. Add dried kombu to the soup, red chili flakes, chopped carrot, and season with salt and pepper. Let it simmer for a while.

7. Carefully add the gyoza to the soup and let it cook until the skin has turned translucent and soft.

8. Ready to serve.

Shrimp gyoza (Japanese steam-fried dumplings)

After craving for gyoza for days, I finally made it. Shrimp gyoza, to be exact. The regular gyoza recipes usually call for ground pork. So, if you`re not into seafood version, just go with the pork. I believe beef and chicken will do great too.

Like in other kinds of dumplings, gyoza are made by preparing the filling and wrap individual portions of it with dumpling skins before finally cooking them. The pack of dumpling skins I bought has recipe on it and I kept the pack in the kitchen because I wanted to copy the recipe for you. But, here the but comes, he saw an empty package on the kitchen counter when I wasn`t around and threw it away. So it`s gone ad this post is going to be a measurementless recipe again as usual.

Anyway, each dumpling will need like a tsp or tbs of filling (depends on the size of the skin), so you can roughly estimate the amount of filling you need. If you still end up having leftovers, you can use them later for gyoza again or other dumplings. I actually never mind having the leftovers I because I  can use the filling for omelets and the skins for mini pizzas.

Alright, let`s cook then.

Start with preparing the filling. Chop garlic chives and place them in a mixing bowl.

I hope you are not sick of seeing cabbage in my recipes. Other than garlic chives, gyoza needs cabbage. Really. Only this time the cabbage has to be very thinly shredded to make the wrapping process (and your life) easier. Fortunately, it`s very easy to get shredded cabbage here. This kind of thinness is beyond what I my knife can do.

After deshelling and deveining shrimps, mince them up using knife. Or you can just use a food processor for this. Season minced shrimps with salt, pepper, coriander, and cayenne pepper. 

 Toss in the seasoned shrimp to the vegetables.

The seasoning is actually not over yet. Brown chopped garlic, dried shrimps, and ginger until fragrant.

I just love these dried shrimps with their pungent flavor. If you are using pork or beef, try adding these shrimps too. You might love it.

Dump in the sauted spices to the fillings and toss, toss, and toss.
Gyoza recipes usually call for corn starch to prepare the filling, but I ran out of it. So, I just left it out. 

Time to wrap up. Get a sheet of round-shaped dumpling skin and place the filling on the middle. Just keep in mind that placing too much filling will make the skin easier to get torn during wrapping and difficult to close. The dumpling skin I used was about 10-cm in diameter and 1 tsp of filling was just enough. 

After placing the filling, wet the dumpling edge with water.

Fold it into half-moon shape and make sure that it`s perfectly sealed.

Then, pleat the top curve to make this decorative shape. Skipping it won`t hurt at all, though.

Heat oil on medium heat. Arrange the gyoza in it and let it fry until the bottom side get browned. This will take like 3-5 minutes.

If it`s browned already, pour in water until 1/3 to 1/2 of the dumpling height. This will make a loud sizzling sound. We`re about to steam them.

Shortly after pouring in water, put a lid on and cook on high heat. We need the steam to be trapped inside.

The dumplings are ready when most of the liquid has evaporated, the skins has softened and turned slightly transluscent, and you can see the filling. Five minutes should be enough for this.

When the water`s gone and dumplings are cooked, place a plate on the pan and flip the pan over. This will give you the browned side of the gyoza facing up on the plate. Or just use your spatula.

Serve it with dipping sauce, which is usually a mixture of soy sauce, chilli-infused sesame oil, vinegar, and lemon juice.

Dip dip....

..and have a bite.

Ingredients:
Garlic chives, chopped
Cabbage, thinly shredded
Shrimp, minced
Cayenne pepper
Coriander
Salt
Pepper
Garlic, chopped and sauted
Ginger, chopped and sauted
Dried shrimp, chopped and sauted
Chilli, sliced and sauted
Corn starch

Dumpling skin (round-shaped type)

Goodbye 2010 and Hello 2011!

It`s January 1, 10 pm in Japan and I hope it`s not too late or too early (is there any place where it`s still Dec 31, 2010?) to greet you all a HAPPY NEW YEAR 2011!!
Year 2010 gave me so many memorable events and moments for these reasons:
1. I (finally) graduated (after all those years)
2. I (finally) turned 30 (oooopsss..!)
3. I got married
4. I fell in love with cooking
5. I started writing this blog

I`m sure you too have your own precious moments last year (and before that too) and let`s wish for more great moments to come in our lives!

As for our New Year`s celebration, we didn`t exactly doing any celebration. My kitchen still needs to get fixed, but water already stopped dropping for now at least. On New Year`s eve, we actually had our dinner outside and each of us had a bowl of beef udon. Back home and when it was nearly 11 pm, he said he was hungry (again!).
So I checked out the fridge and I`ve got wonton skins, which I bought before the kitchen incident, some cheese, and canned tuna. Alright, wonton pizza it is!

Crunch crunch crunch! Yes, I`m shamelessly showing you what we had for our New Year`s eve. This is not a festive treat, but definitely a delish one, I tell you. Very quick to whip up too! Crunch!

So, how was your New Year`s party??

Wonton pizza

I was craving for pizza. Recently, we had a medium chicken pizza from Pizza Hut and with the price, I thought that was quite a fancy meal for us. Then, when the craving hit me again (no, I`m not pregnant, I`m just hungry all the time), I remembered watching a TV show about what you can do more with microwave and toaster. One of them is gyouza skin toast. Gyouza is sauteed and steamed Japanese dumpling and the skin is similar with wonton`s. The TV lady showed some stuff like peanut butter or jam for the topping on the qyouza`s skin toast. So I figured, this should work like pizza! Even better, with thinner and crispier skin. Then, here they are, wonton skins spread with tomato ketchup and mayonnaise and topped with tuna, grated cheese, and mushroom.

After baking at 200 C for 15 minutes, sure enough, the adorable mini pizza! Look how small and crunchy they are! I think this can be a really good tidbits for your party. Tried with banana and chocolate and they were good too. Go explore the shop and your kitchen and you probably will find interesting stuffs for the topping.

And by the way, it`s powdered seaweed I sprinkled on top. I just got a bag of seaweed with a very good price and I love it!And most importantly, these babies are way cheaper (and lighter) than the one we ordered online ;)