Dumplings For The New Year

 The Lunar New Year is fast approaching it and with it comes all the treats of the season. One of them is a plate of dumplings. These are easy to make and fun to eat. Even creating the dough or skins is a simple task. Celebrate the Year of the Ox with a tasty plump dumpling.

Genevieve Ko wrote about these delicious dumplings in today New York Times Food section. Ms Ko, author of Better Baking also gave a few good recipes and how tos  as well. Any home chef, whether novice or experienced can create them. There are two, one savory, filled wit tofu and veggies and the other sweet,  tang yuan, stuffed with sesame seeds, peanut butter and sugar swimming in a sweet ginger soup. Making the dough is therapeutic. There's a soothing rhythm to kneading and rolling out the dough cutting the circles, then filling them.Many home chefs think that making skins or wrappers is hard. They're really not. It's a mix of just flour and hot water. Using the last ensures wrappers that are thin and simple to pleat. Make them with cold water and you wind up with ones that are tougher and more elastic.The tang yuan requires a different dough. The sweet dumplings have wrappers made from rice flour and a cooked mix of water and a neutral oil like grapeseed. Both kinds of wrappers need to stand, the savory for half and hour the rice flour one for only ten minutes.

The fillings are tasty and can be modified. You can be vary them or put your own spin on them. Ms. Ko uses tofu mixed with spinach, watercress or baby bok choy. There's also celery stalks too added and chili crisp for flavor. Chili crisp is a fiery savory/sweet mix you can buy or make yourself. It's a blend of red pepper flakes, ginger, sugar and cinnamon. There's also soy salt to balance this out. The dumplings are  cooked immediately in a mix of oil and water. This ensures a crispy bottom and a tender top. Keep in mind oil and water cooking together can be lethal so keep a cover on the pan until the rapid firecracker popping stops. By then the water has evaporated and you can finish cooking the dumplings in an uncovered pan. As for the sweet ones, they're cooked in the ginger soup. This again is a mix of scrubbed ginger with either rock or granulated sugar. This will only take ten minutes and then divide the dumplings and soup into individual bowls. The filling is a combined mash of ground and toasted sesame seeds and peanut butter. This is put into a freezer to firm up before being turned into filling.

It's the Year of the Ox! Celebrate with savory and sweet dumplings. They're a great way to ring in the Lunar New Year.