Home Made Chinese Dumpling Episode I

Lamb Dumpling, originally uploaded by Afulki.

We had to bring food over to friends' place for dinner and I was wondering how I could bring all the ingredients easily to feed two families as well as making the dishes quickly? Dumplings!

So I showed up with below ingredients for the evening meal. And we immediately started a pre-dinner party - to make the dumplings together:

A) Lamb filling mixed in a big bowl:
1 pound ground lamb;
3/4 pound grated squash;
* to marinate the ground lamb 1 hour in advance, you need below items and then give it a gentle good stir. Keep refrigerated:
2 table spoon five spice powder;
2 table spoon Sichuan pepper corn juice;
Salt and Chinese soy sauce to taste;
2 finely chopped spring onions;
1 ounce grated ginger;
Approx 6 tble spoon of Olive oil;
3 tble spoon Sesame oil;

B) Two packs of dumpling wraps. (Most Asian grocery store stock these.)

C) Dipping sauce:
According to taste, you can just dip each dumpling in any vinegar lightly before eating. Or if you find the filling doesn't taste strong enough, you can make a dipping sauce to compensate the flavour with: vinegar, soy sauce; ground garlic; sesame oil; or even chili sauce;

D) Chinese liquor for drinking; (Caution! Caution! Very strong stuff! For sipping, not drinking!)

Time for the wrapping party!

The principle of wrapping was to enclose a tea spoon size of filling inside the pastry securely. When I say securely, I mean it, do a QC check before placing them in the boiling water. Otherwise, you might end up with a giant meat noodle soup instead.

How to wrap the dumplings? The above sample (made by Zakia, chef of Simply Moroccan Cuisine) is a great sample. This is her first time making dumplings and it looks very close to a classic Chinese home made dumpling. Creativity is also welcome! With Lina, a three-year-old girl's help, we had so many kinds:
Little sofa; sun flower (with two wraps); half moon; star; flag (it was Scottish and she didn't tell me how to make a Chinese flag dumpling.); Christmas gift box; and gift envelopes!

Boil, drain, and enjoy!