Chinese Dumplings

My young friend Hui, who you may remember made green-onion bread for the Christmas potluck (see post dated Dec. 19, 2009), recently produced hundreds of dumplings in celebration of Chinese New Year. She very kindly relayed the recipe to me and recorded the process with many photos and several videos; I have included one of the videos with this post. Thanks Hui!

Ingredients:

- 20 shrimp, chopped finely
- 8 dried mushrooms, re-hydrated and chopped finely
- 1 lobo (or lobak) also known as Daikon or Japanese white radish ( This is available in many grocery stores or in Asian markets)
- 1/2 kilogram of ground pork (just over a pound)
- 3 green onions, chopped finely
- 3-4 tablespoons of finely chopped fresh ginger
- 1/3 cup of oil (not olive oil)
- 1 tablespoon of cooking wine
- 2 tablespoons of soy sauce
- 1/4 teaspoon of pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon of ground ginger
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon of sesame oil
- dumpling wraps from an Asian store

Peel and slice the lobak, then place it is a saucepan of boiling water and cook it until it is semi-transparent. Remove it from the pot and chop it finely. Add it to a large bowl along with all of the other ingredients, (aside from the dumpling wraps of course). Mix everything together well; this is the dumpling filling. Cover a cookie sheet with a dusting of flour. You are now ready to begin producing dumplings. Place about 2 teaspoons of filling in the middle of a dumpling wrap and fold the wrap in half, producing a half-moon shape. Pinch the outer edges of the dumpling wrap together tightly and place the dumpling on the floured cookie sheet. Repeat this process until all of the filling has been used. (Hui thinks that this recipe will produce over 100 dumplings; it serves 3-4 people.) Boil a large pot of water and add the dumplings to the water in batches; avoid overcrowding and remember to stir the pot once the dumplings are in the water to ensure that they don't stick to the bottom. Once the water starts to boil after the addition of the dumplings, add some cold water. Let the water come to a boil once more and add cold water again. Repeat the addition of cold water for a third time. When the water boils again, the dumplings are cooked. Drain them and serve with a sauce made of vinegar, a little sugar and some hot pepper flakes.

Editorial Note: If you can't find lobak, use a very large carrot instead.