Gyoza, Potstickers, Dumplings, Whatever... They're just yummy!

Hello. I'm back. The gyoza came out good. Normally, I don't make it for lunch. I had the stuffing all ready for dinner but when I opened my package of gyoza skin, it had gone bad. Oops! So I bought a pack yesterday and made it just earlier today for lunch. I always like to make extra and freeze it so I can have it as my lunch or dinner or those days when you have unexpectant friends over and want to entertain them. I learned how to make gyoza from my mom. So the basic ingredients and procedure is my mom's way, but I like to experiment with the recipe sometimes especially when I find gyoza recipes in other places. For today's gyoza recipe, approximately...

1/2 head of small cabbage, chopped fine to medium
1/2 yellow onion, chopped
4 stalks of green onion, chopped
1 tsp. butter
1/2 pound ground pork, the fatty kind from the Asian market
1/2 pound ground chicken
1 Tbsp. grated ginger
1 Tbsp. grated garlic
1 egg
1 Tbsp. oyster sauce
1 Tbsp. sesame oil
1 Tbsp. soy sauce
1 Tbsp. chili-garlic sauce
salt and pepper
2 packets of Japanese brand gyoza wrappers

In a wok or frying pan, I sautee the onion in butter and then add the cabbage and green onion. I then add the salt and pepper to taste. I move it away from the hot burner and let it cool down. While it's cooling, I mix together the ground meats, ginger, garlic, egg, oyster sauce, sesame oil, soy sauce and the chili-garlic sauce. You can add more salt or pepper if you want. But with the soy sauce and the oyster sauce, it should be enough. And even if the gyoza filling is not as flavorful as you would have liked, it's alright because you normally dip the dumpling in a sauce anyways. After you make your meaty filling, add the cooled veggie filling to it. If you still really care about how the filling tastes, just boil some water and drop a ball of the filling in it to cook, then eat it to see if you like it.

Now, filling the wrapper... Get a little bowl with some water in it. Using a regular spoon, put a dollop of the filling in the middle of the wrapper. Then, with your finger, wet your finger with that bowl of water and run it all the way along the edge of the wrapper. Now, fold up one half of the wrapper so that it looks like a taco. Pleat one end of the .... Forget it... Just get the plastic gyoza wrapping tool. It's too difficult to explain. Note: I use the Japanese brand gyoza wrappers because that's what I grew up with and the thick wrappers I find to be too doughy for my taste. It's funny, when I was little, I hated the gyoza wrapper, I would peel it off and dip the filling in the sauce and eat it.

Now, the cooking part. I butter the frying pan on high heat, put as many as I can on there, and listen for the sizzle. The bottom should brown a little bit. I then pour about a third cup of water and bring the heat to medium. I then cover it and listen for the sizzle sound again. That's when a lot of the water has cooked off. I take off the cover and put it back on high heat and watch the rest of the water cook off and the gyoza bottom to brown a bit more and become crunchy. Mmmm!!! And when you serve the gyoza, it should be crunchy side up so that it stays that way.

For the sauce, I just mix together grated ginger, lemon juice (or rice vinegar), ichimi tongarashi, ra-yu (chili oil), sesame oil, and soy sauce. All to taste. My mom normally has the ingredients for the sauce out on the dinner table and we each make our own sauce in our dipping bowl the way we like it. A cultural difference I noticed... My family usually has salad or sesame flavored spinach on the side with a bowl of rice... But my husband, being Chinese American, is getting used to the Japanese way of having a bowl of rice with those dumplings. I guess my husband eats those dumplings by itself.

So that's how I make them. Yum!

Mmm... Pork Chops... Arglll...

Last weekend, we had a dinner and board game night at our place. I made this whole Italian dinner. I made chicken parmesan that came out juicy as usual, fiery lemon angel hair pasta, balsamic glazed chicken wings, basil pesto and sundried tomato pesto for smearing onto bread, salad with salami and red onion, and zuppa toscana with toasted garlic naan seasoned with dried thyme, butter, olive oil, and sea salt. Most of these recipes are from Food Network's Giada De Laurentiis. The chicken parm is not quite Giada's anymore. It's a smorgasbord of different recipes. Oh! And the zuppa toscana is from my brother. He found it online where they have recipe copies of restaurant dishes. So this is the one you can find at Olive Garden. It's super easy. And it was one of people's favorites at the dinner and game night. ... I can't believe I didn't take a photo!! ARG!!

But I did take a photo of the pork chops I made two nights ago. It finally came out just right! It's my mom's dishes that is one my favorites. All you do is get thin-cut or regular cut pork chops with the bone in it. You sprinkle both sides of of the chop with garlic salt. Then broil it until the top side looks cooked. I don't know for how long. I just turn on the oven light and look in. Then I flip it over and drizzle a little sake (1 tsp.) and soy sauce (1 Tbsp.) on each chop. I broil it a little more until it's not pink anymore and then add chopped green onions on each one and another drizzle of soy sauce. Cook a bit more until it looks fully cooked. Then eat.

Well, I'm off to make gyoza for lunch. I'll post that soon.

Unsuccessful Recipe!

Blech!!! Blech! Blech! Blech! It was too good to be true! After three successful new recipes I had a bad one. I made "Ebi to Broccoli 'Gratin'" by Amy Kaneko from her cookbook called, "Let's Cook Japanese Food!" It's a wonderful cookbook. She's an American woman married to a Japanese man whose family taught her how to cook Japanese food. Once she moved back to the US, she tried recreating those favorite recipes using ingredients and cooking tools that you can find here. Since Japanese cuisines are influenced by other countries, there are plenty of "chuka ryori" and "yoshoku" dishes in the book. It's usually difficult to find those recipes except in Japanese language-only recipe books. Her recipes are pretty good. One night, we did an "izakaya" night. From her book, I made agedashi dofu (fried soft tofu), spinach in sesame dressing, steamed clams in sake and butter broth, and karaage chicken. I also made some gyoza, too. I took a photo of it, but I can't find it. It was fun, we had sake, too. Well, going back to the gratin... My husband and I have always had problems when we try to make creamy cheesey sauces for macaroni. The gratin was easy and all the flavors were basically good, it's just that the cheese sauce didn't come out very good. It was all curdly and super greasy. But I have to say it was the closest I've ever been to getting it right, though. So I think if someone who knew how to do it right would actually show me, I can do it.

Successful New Recipes!

Here's what I made so far this week since Saturday. All new recipes. And so far really successful!

Panna Cotta with Strawberry Compote - The Panna Cotta is my sister's recipe from Italy. The compote was improvised. I just chopped up some strawberries and simmered them with sugar, orange juice, and amaretto. It's garnished with a mint spring from my balcony "garden". The dessert was a hit when I took it to a game night/potluck. I still had some heavy cream left so I made some more but this time topped it with espresso that was simmered with amaretto. Mmmm!Grilled Salted Salmon Collar - This is one of favorite dish that my mom makes. I've been craving it for so long. I finally bought it myself and salted it and grilled it on the stovetop grill. The kitchen still smells fishy. :( But it tasted like home. It was so moist and salty. We were so thirsty afterwards though.Mentaiko Spaghetti - Mmmm!! I made this today for dinner. I found the recipe on recipezaar.com. I followed the recipe exactly and it was so easy! The only thing I did at the end was add about 3 tablespoons of the pasta water to the finished product. The noodles needed to loosen up. I garnished it with nori and a dollop of fresh karashi mentaiko that I had left over. I was annoyed when my hubby brought up his finished plate to the kitchen sink. He had left the sauce with the fish roe still on the plate. I told him to eat it because fish roe is a bit pricey. He scraped it up and ate it.

BBQ Dinner on the Balcony

Well, we don't have a BBQ grill so my husband grilled some pork ribs on those stovetop grill thingy that are really annoying to clean. He randomly mixed a rub and marinated it overnight and then grilled it with store-bought sauce. It was so yummy. And I made the side dishes using recipes from the July issue of Bon Appetite magazine. Yup, it's the one with Next Food Network Star's Rory's BBQ recipe featured on the cover. The coleslaw was just okay. And then I made the herby potato salad. That, I would make again. But of course, I modified those recipes since I'm so picky about my veggies and herbs.

Weird Kitchen!

July is a weird month for my kitchen! I got a carton of eggs and so far, each egg that I break has double yolk in it! Today I had medamayaki gohan (fried egg on rice). I was very excited to eat my double yolk egg. It tasted like regular eggs. I looked it up and I guess it happens when a young hen just begins to lay eggs. Then, after awhile, she lays the normal single yolk eggs. The other weird thing that happened was on Monday. When I was frying some zucchini for dinner, one of it smiled at me when I flipped it over! But my husband got the last smile because he ate it! And then, this morning, when I opened a fresh can of Illy espresso, the grounds exploded onto my face! I thought the grounds would blind or caffeinate my eyes! But I'm alright. The weird thing is that it never exploded like that at my husband when he opened a fresh can. It just released the gas. Weird, right?! I think so!!

Cards and Gift Tags

Whoa! I haven't blogged for a long time. I finally started working on my job applications so I got a little busy. Well, here are some things I worked on. Although, I think I worked on these in May... Yup. I did. Those are Mother's Day cards for my mom and my mother-in-law. I got the idea and patterns for those cards from a Japanese felt book. And the tin cans are filled with tea from Lupicia and chocolate from Scharffen Berger as gifts for my girlfriends. The gift tags are another idea taken from that book.