Mushroom, Tofu and Coriander Dumplings (or Vegan Gyoza)

The other night I made mushroom ramen soup, which was very good, but that is only the beginning of the story, and the recipe for the Ramen is not in this post (if you are interested you can read it here or scroll below this post).

The thing is that to make the mushroom stock I used a lot of mixed dried Asian mushrooms, and I had a bit leftover, so I decided to use them to make dumplings.

So the ingredients are:

Cooked Asian mushrooms (about a cup)

Dumpling pastry (50 pieces, round)

Tofu, 1 block

Coriander (a few leaves and stalks)

Soy sauce, to taste (I always use Japanese soy sauce)

There are two more ingredients which I didn't photograph, one is

Sesame oil, 1 tsp

(I didn't take a photo because my bottle is too greasy and you cannot read the label)

and the second is

Bread crumbs, 1 or 2 tbsp

(I didn't take a photo because I was to busy mixing the filling)

Place the mushrooms, tofu, coriander, soy sauce and sesame oil in a food processor and pulse until you get a fine texture. Add the bread crumbs a little at the time to reach a workable thickness (the other ingredients have high liquid content). I add bread crumbs also because they give the filling a nice and balanced taste, bringing out the Umami in the other ingredients.

I didn't add salt: the mushrooms were cooked in a light vegetable stock, and the soy sauce is salted. But you do what you like :-)

Here my 11 years old daughter took over the camera for the first step by step pics.

Place a little filling on each pastry circle

Lightly wet the borders with water

Gently fold the pastry

Pinch the ends well and make sure that there are no air bubbles inside

If you can, try to make them look pretty!

Done!

Now Arantxa has a go! We had 50 dumplings to make, so it is good to do it with someone, or it gets boring!

To cook them:

Personally I really like steamed dumplings, or cooked in a soup, but we had soup the night before, and my family really liked them fried... but I didn't want to fry all those dumplings (too greasy) so I opted for a half-way. In Japan they make Gyosa, also called potstickers, you cook them quickly in a hot pot with very little oil.

Place them in the hot pot standing up so that the bottom get golden and lightly crunchy, then turn them on both sides (I did 25 at the time and it was hard work!!!). At the end you are supposed to put a lid on and let them simmer in their own steam for a few seconds, but because I had so many dumplings I pan fried them in two batches, then put them all back in the pot and added just a little water to create more steam. Lid on for a minute and they were ready and piping hot. We ate them with sweet chilli sauce and soy sauce, very filling, 50 between 4 people and our bellies were round, and satisfied!

How to make Rose Turkish Delights (Lokum), and Sweet New Zealand

Rose Turkish Delights (Lokum) Before I start I would like to say that I don't have a sugar thermometer, essential if you are really into confectionery, and that I didn't use much sugar for these Turkish delights. Many recipes use much more sugar, and it is not that I wanted to make a low sugar treat here (it is still pretty sweet), it is just that making it at home really makes me realize how much sugar there is already in my diet, and if I can have something with a little less... well, why not! This method is 'home friendly' i.e. these can be made at home with very little effort and equipment, and the recipe comes from my book Sweet As... where I also have the recipe for lavender and orange blossom Turkish Delights. Ingredients 1 l water 300 g sugar 2 tbsp lemon juice 100 g cornflour 1 tbsp frozen raspberries 1 tbsp rose water icing sugar (very little) and cornflour (lots) to dust. In a pot put hal...

Silver beet Paneer, a variation of Palak Paneer

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Home Made Marzipan Sweets

This is another recipe from my book Sweet As , and something that I love to make for Xmas. I would like to say that for marzipan you should get the best almonds around, natural, but here in New Zealand the almonds taste different from the ones in Italy. They are imported, not sure where from most of the time, but they are not top grade almonds. Still, with a few tips, you can make your marzipan taste great even with 'regular' almonds! Buy them natural, not blanched, you need to blanche then yourself or the result will be too dry. To blanch them you need to put them in boiling water for a couple of minutes, and then add cold water and take the skin off, one by one. For this recipe you will need: 200 g almonds 100 g icing sugar 5 apricot kernels. As I was saying before, the almond here have little taste, so I like to collect the stones from apricot and get the almonds out. They are a real pain to crack! In the photo above you can see apricot stones and kernels. The apricot kernel...

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