Asian Dumplings: Mastering Gyoza, Spring Rolls, Samosas, and More [A Cookbook] by Andrea Nguyen (PDF)

Description

Is there anything more satisfying than a well-made Asian dumpling? Wrapped, rolled, or filled; steamed, fried, or baked–asian dumplings are also surprisingly easy to prepare and enjoy at home, as Andrea Nguyen demonstrates with more than 75 recipes. Nguyen is a celebrated food writer and teacher with a unique ability to interpret authentic Asian cooking styles for a Western audience. Her crystal-clear recipes for Asia’s most popular savory and sweet parcels, pockets, packages, and pastries range from Lumpia (the addictive fried spring rolls from the Philippines) to Shanghai Soup Dumplings (delicate thin-skinned dumplings filled with hot broth and succulent pork) to Gulab Jamun (India’s rich, syrupy sweets). Organized according to type (wheat pastas, skins, buns, and pastries; translucent wheat and tapioca preparations; rice dumplings; legumes and tubers; sweet dumplings), Asian Dumplings covers Eastern, Southeastern, and Southern Asia, with recipes from China, Japan, Korea, Nepal, Tibet, India, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Throughout, Nguyen shares the best techniques for shaping, filling, cooking, and serving each kind of dumpling. Plus she makes it easy to incorporate dumplings into your life by giving a thorough introduction to essential equipment and ingredients and offering make-ahead and storage guidance with time-saving shortcuts that still yield delectable results, and tips on planning a dumpling dinner party.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: From Publishers Weekly Nguyen, author of Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, celebrates a wide array of dough-wrapped treats from China, Vietnam, Japan, Philippines, India and Korea in this lavishly photographed homage to the not-so-humble dumpling. She divides her treasure trove of recipes by dough type, including filled pastas, thin skins, stuffed buns, rich pastries and more. Japanese pork and shrimp pot stickers, Filipino chicken and egg buns, and spicy potato samosas whet the appetite and show the diversity of the offerings she provides. Line drawings highlight shaping techniques to make half-moons, pea pods, crescents and footballs. Nguyen includes recipes for making dough and wrappers from scratch, including rice sheet batter, wheat starch dough and basic dough, among others. She also showcases dessert dumplings such as fried banana spring rolls, and milk dumplings in cardamom and saffron syrup. Sections on sauces, seasoning and stocks, key ingredients and essential equipment round out a superb collection. This alluring and attractive book will appeal to a wide audience of home cooks and trained chefs. 75 full-color photos. (Oct.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Review IACP Cookbook Award finalistOne of NPR’s Best Cookbooks of 2009“Asian Dumplings is full of inspiration for vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike. Samosas, lumpia, pot stickers, momo, gyōza, wontons, and bāo in one volume? And diagrams for all the folding techniques? Thank you, Andrea.” –Heidi Swanson, author of Super Natural Cooking“If it’s a small, succulent parcel encased in dough, pastry, batter, or leaves from anywhere between India and Polynesia, you’ll find a recipe and crystal-clear instructions for making it with Andrea Nguyen’s Asian Dumplings.” —Cooking Light, Favorite Cookbooks, 2010″Nguyen, author of Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, celebrates a wide array of dough-wrapped treats from China, Vietnam, Japan, Philippines, India and Korea in this lavishly photographed homage to the not-so-humble dumpling. . .Line drawings highlight shaping techniques to make half-moons, pea pods, crescents and footballs. Sections on sauces, seasoning and stocks, key ingredients and essential equipment round out a superb collection. This alluring and attractive book will appeal to a wide audience of home cooks and trained chefs.” —Publishers Weekly“Until I began cooking from this remarkable book I had no idea that preparing Asian dumplings was so easy and so satisfying. Andrea Nguyen’s latest work is authoritative, fun, and filled with recipes that yield insanely delicious results.” –James Oseland, editor in chief of Saveur and author of Cradle of Flavor“I was truly excited when I first picked up this book, a feeling that quickly turned to awe. Andrea Nguyen introduces you to Asian dumplings you never knew existed, makes you feel that you can’t live until you try them, then takes your hand and, in admirably lucid detail, shows you exactly how to make them. Asian Dumplings is destined to become a classic–it’s already an instant must-have for any Asian food lover.” –John Thorne, author of Outlaw Cook and Mouth Wide Open“Andrea Nguyen has done a remarkable job of guiding us through the world of Asian dumplings, sharing their history and evolution and providing plenty of user-friendly recipes. This beautiful cookbook will make you want to throw a dumpling-making party every time you turn the page.” –Corinne Trang, author of Essentials of Asian Cuisine and Noodles Every Day“Andrea’ s humor, enthusiasm, and comforting pragmatism make me want to bolt into my kitchen to knead and roll and wrap and steam and bake and fry and, best of all, gobble. This book will make you very, very hungry.” –Niloufer Ichaporia King, author of My Bombay Kitchen From the Publisher * The first and only cookbook on making authentic versions of the most popular East Asian, Southeast Asian, and South Asian dumplings, including Chinese dim sum favorites. * Features more than 75 step-by-step line illustrations and full-color styled food shots. * Andrea Nguyen’s first book, INTO THE VIETNAMESE KITCHEN, demonstrated her unique ability to interpret Asian cooking styles for American cooks. About the Author ANDREA NGUYEN is an author, teacher, and consultant based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Born in Vietman, she came to the United States at the age of six. Her first book, a children’s book, chronicles that journey. She has written a number of acclaimed cookbooks, including Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, Asian Dumplings, and The Banh Mi Handbook. Her food writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Cooking Light, Lucky Peach, Saveur, and Rodale’s Organic Life, where she is a contributing editor. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. IntroductionDumplings make people smile. At their core, they are fun, uncomplicated, wonderfully satisfying foods that can be enjoyed with a crowd or savored in solitude. They’re reminders of good times–preparing them for family, noshing on them with friends, or queuing up for them with great anticipation. The individual dough morsels, diminutive pouches, and leaf-wrapped packages contain treasures that never fail to please the palate. I’ve enjoyed a dumpling-filled life since my youth. One of the first cooking assignments my mother gave me (after cooking rice) was folding wontons. After all, we ate rice daily and frequently ate fried wontons and wontons in soup. My mother was smart to figure out that a precocious ten-year-old was perfect for these elementary but crucial family kitchen duties. Making batches of 150 to 200 wontons became part of my life, and I rarely thought of it as drudgery. I rather liked folding different shapes and devising new methods to make the work go faster and better. I didn’t always work alone; sometimes my siblings and I challenged one another to see who could fold the prettiest wontons or pleated pot stickers.We used premade wrappers for Chinese-style dumplings because they were readily available, but there was no such convenience for Vietnamese dumplings. Those were my mother’s specialty, and she prepared hers fromscratch to ensure that our family had the tastes of our homeland. Treats such as bánh ít (Steamed Sticky Rice Dumplings with Shrimp and Pork, page 168) were part of my options for both breakfast and afternoon snacks. We also exchanged gifts of homemade Vietnamese dumplings with family and friends–we all knew they were hard to come by in the United States.I’ve probably eaten as many Asian dumplings “out” as I have at home. My father regularly piled us into our Buick Estate Wagon and drove over an hour to Chinatown in Los Angeles for Saturday morning dim sum. In the restaurants’ din, I listened carefully for the dumpling ladies’ melodious calls as they made their rounds of the tables: har gow, siu mai, char siu bao–the Cantonese names of perennial favorites (shrimp dumplings, cook-and-sell dumplings, and roasted pork buns, respectively). During a yearlong fellowship in Hong Kong in the early 1990s, I explored first-rate dim sum houses, experienced for the first time wondrous translucent Chiu Chow Dumplings (page 137) filled with a nutty surf-and-turf mixture, and nibbled on magnificent tiny steamed buns on a trip to Yunnan province in China. I observed professional dumpling cooks whenever possible, and upon returning to the United States, not only did I continue to seek out more Asian dumplings, I also began experimenting with making Chinese and other styles of wrappers from scratch. I asked my mother about Vietnamese dumplings, their fillings, dough, and cooking techniques. It wasn’t long before I realized that there were many similarities among the dumplings enjoyed in Asia. I studied cookbooks for tips and keys to unlock the world of Asian dumplings. My skills improved through lots of trial-and-error, as there was no publication dedicated to Asian dumplings and cooking classes on the subject were extremely rare. The dough and rolling techniques were hard to figure out at first, and I made plenty of blunders, but my clumsy-looking results always at least tasted good. In fact, over my years of eating and cooking, and especially through the process of polishing the recipes for this book, the most important insights I’ve gained are these:• Asian dumplings don’t have to look pretty to taste fabulous. • With few exceptions, there are numerous ways to fold and shape a dumpling. • Practice is the way to mastery, but you really don’t have to lead a dumpling-obsessed life to learn to make them well. • You get to eat your mistakes! Enjoy them as much as you do your successes.Defining Asia and Asian Dumplings Asia is either huge or humongous, depending on where you draw the defining boundaries. Though the Middle East, Turkey, the Central Asian republics, and most of Russia are, geographically speaking, part of Asia, the recipes in this book come from the three subregions of East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. A good number of the dumplings from this vast swathe of territory have Chinese roots, as the Middle Kingdom’s preparations begot many others throughout Asia, and because Cantonese dim sum is popular all over Asia and abroad wherever there are large Asian populations. But what exactly is a dumpling in the Asian context? Many English speakers categorize Asian-filled pastas, such as pot stickers and wontons, as dumplings, but in actuality the concept of the dumpling does not exist in the Asian culinary framework. In the same vein as Shu Xi (if many hundreds of years later), acclaimed Chinese cookbook author Irene Kuo described pot stickers, siu mai, wontons, egg rolls, buns, and the like as “dough stuffs” in her classic 1977 work The Key to Chinese Cooking. In the Vietnamese repertoire, such foods belong in the immense category of bánh. Similarly, kuih is the Malay term attached to a large category of savory and sweet cakes, pastries, and dumplings. An Indian vada can be described as a fritter, doughnut, cake, or dumpling. Ambiguity aside, all dumplings share certain characteristics. They are simple foods with few social pretensions. On occasion they feature meat or seafood, but for the most part, they involve dough made from staple grains, legumes, or vegetables, along with water, salt, and, sometimes, leaven. It is the humble nature of dumplings that steals people’s hearts. After spending much time pondering, researching, and preparing these foods, I can conclude that for the purposes of this book, Asian dumplings include savory and sweet dishes that are made from balls of dough, or are small parcels of food encased in pastry, dough, batter, or leaves. As you can imagine, there are endless possibilities, and the recipes herein offer a broad sampling to hone your skills and whet your appetite for more.Why Make Wrappers from Scratch? Commercially made wonton, pot sticker, egg roll, and spring roll skins are readily available in the refrigerated section of most supermarkets, but there is a marked difference in the end results when you make the wrappers from scratch. Many cooks cannot fathom preparing Asian dumplings without the store-bought skins; but in fact, there are Asian cooks who could not imagine dumplings without homemade ones. I could not present a pan-Asian collection of dumplings if the focus was on pre-made wrappers because that would narrowly limit recipes to certain Chinese or Chinese-inspired preparations. The world of Asian dumplings is vast, and you can only begin to taste and experience the multitude of dumplings if you venture beyond the skins available on grocery store shelves. Asian dumpling masters, whether professionals or home cooks, take pride in making their own skins and dough. With a little guidance, you can too. Additionally, after you’ve made dumplings from scratch, you will become a more informed dumpling diner, as you’ll have a deeper understanding of what goes into making stupendous ones.Fresh wrappers are easier to prepare and to work with than people think, as they do not need to be moistened to seal. They also stretch and are very forgiving, yielding to your pulling, pleating, and pinching. Surprisingly, many dough ingredients are available at regular supermarkets, while specialty flours and starches are standard items at Asian markets. You may not always have time to make dumpling wrappers from scratch, which is why there are “Lazy Day Tips” scattered in this book to guide you when you want to substitute store-bought skins.A Cook’s Guide to This BookTo direct you toward success, the recipes in this book are arranged in a progressive manner. Chapters are organized by dough types to help you focus and develop your skills. A master dough or batter recipe often leads, and recipes with different fillings and cooking methods follow. The collection begins with dumplings encased in a basic wrapper made of all-purpose flour and water. If you then add egg, leaven or fat, you can create more complex doughs for knockout thin wonton skins, pillowy stuff-ed buns, and flaky pastries. After the section on dumplings based on wheat-flour dough, subsequent chapters focus on dumplings that employ less familiar ingredients, such as wheat starch, tapioca starch, and legumes and tubers. Interspersed among those recipes are a few that use banana leaf as an inedible wrapper that imparts special fragrance and flavor. See “Tips for Success” on page 19 for specific hints on using the recipes. Use the drawings in this book to help you shape dumplings, but also look online at Asiandumplingtips.com for additional assistance in the form of photos and video. You’ll be able to obtain extra information, pose questions, and share knowledge. Essential and Handy EquipmentYou will need basic kitchen equipment and a few modestly priced additions to prepare the recipes in this book. Sharp knives make fast work of prepping filling ingredients; the Japanese-style santoku and usuba knives are great for producing thin slices and fine cuts. A food processor, an electric mini-chopper, and a spice grinder (or electric coffee grinder reserved for spices) are all great time-savers for making dumplings. To this battery of equipment, I encourage you to add three essential tools for preparing Asian dumplings: a wooden-dowel rolling pin, a Chinese steamer, and a scale.Wooden-Dowel Rolling Pin Producing delicate round wrappers for dumplings is faster and much easier with a skinny, lightweight wooden rolling pin. One hand works the pin in short downward strokes while the other hand rotates the dough to create a thin, delicate wrapper. You can’t do this quickly and efficiently with the standard Western rolling pin. Look for the Asian rolling pins at housewares and restaurant supply shops in Asian enclaves. They come in different widths, but one that is about 3/4 inch thick is standard. Or, go to a home improvement or hardware store and have a 12-inch section cut from a 3/4-inch-thick dowel. Before using it, lightly sand the dowel to ensure a smooth surface. Chinese Steamer There are various ways to improvise the Chinese steaming process–ranging from crisscrossing chopsticks in a wok and balancing a plate of food on top to using recycled tin cans and a Western collapsible metal vegetable steaming basket–but the best tool for cooking dumplings is an actual Chinese steamer. It is an ingenious, well-thought-out piece of equipment that has been indispensable to Asian cooks for eons. A metal Chinese steamer costs about $50; a bamboo steamer set costs roughly half as much. Years ago, these pieces of equipment were hard to find; but nowadays, they are widely available at Asian markets and cookware shops and online. Made of aluminum or stainless steel, a multitiered metal steamer comprises a large bottom pan; two sturdy, stackable trays for holding the food to be cooked; and a domed lid. The bottom is lightweight, allowing you to bring lots of water to a boil quickly and keep it going without having to replenish the water often. The trays are perforated, usually with holes the size of peas or smaller, to allow steam to jet upward to cook the food. The lid’s shape allows steam to circulate and condensation to drip down the sides of the steamer, not onto the food cooking on the trays. I grew up cooking with a metal steamer, and I like them because they are durable and easy to clean. However, they are not as attractive as old-fashioned bamboo steamers, which can be taken directly from stovetop to table. Bamboo steamers are prone to mildew, burning, and falling apart, but those disadvantages can mostly be overcome if you wash and dry them carefully. During steaming, the bamboo absorbs excess moisture so there is no worry about condensation dripping down onto the food. When a bamboo steamer is new, it lends a subtle fragrance to dumplings, too. Traditionally, one cooks with a bamboo steamer by placing it directly in a wok filled with water, but that method robs the wok of its hard-earned patina. I prefer to use a large (5 or 6-quart) pot or stockpot and place a round, perforated pizza pan or Chinese steamer rack atop. The width of the pot should be the same or a bit bigger than the steamer, and some overhang of the pan or rack is fine so long as the steamer tray covers all the holes. Then I stack the bamboo steamer trays atop for cooking. If you own both metal and bamboo steamers, combine the two: put the bamboo trays directly on top of the bottom pan of water, if they fit; or put the bamboo trays inside or on top of the metal ones. In purchasing a metal steamer, select one with 12-inch-wide trays. I prefer stainless steel to aluminum. Ten-inch-wide bamboo steamers work best with most pots; if your setup for boiling water (whether a wok, a stockpot, or the bottom of a metal steamer) is wide enough, go for one with 12-inch-wide steamer trays. If you can individually select the bamboo steamer trays and lid, stack them together to ensure they fit together snugly before purchasing them. The trays should feel weighty, and the lid should be tightly woven. See the Resources section (page 226) for online vendors if you can’t find one nearby.Scale You may consider weighing ingredients to be restrictive and fussy, but weighing flours and starches will enable you to more consistently produce good dumpling dough. Methods of measuring by volume can yield significant variance, but a scale never lies. Digital scales are highly accurate, affordable, and easy to find at housewares shops. For the dry ingredient weights provided in the recipes, I used the scoop-and-level method to determine the volume equivalents.Handy Tools and Helpful Gadgets Traditionally, rolling out the wrappers was done entirely by hand with wooden-dowel rolling pins, with old and young pitching in as a group to move things along. But a number of Asian home cooks have recently taken to using a Mexican tortilla press to make round dumpling wrappers. Made from cast aluminum, plastic, or wood, and reasonably priced, tortilla presses can be found at Latino grocers and online. For the thin signature skins of wontons, siu mai, and egg rolls, a pasta machine yields remarkable results. With minimal skill, you can produce thin, supple skins that best store-bought ones. All that’s required is repeatedly passing the dough through the machine’s smooth metal rollers. Restaurant supply and housewares shops in Chinatown are among my favorite places to visit. You can find all kinds of nifty, inexpensive tools there. If you venture to one, look for a bamboo dumpling spatula, a terrific gadget for scooping up dumpling fillings and depositing them onto wrappers without sticking. Admittedly, you can use a dinner knife or fork, but the little spatula (about $3) is a neat, old-fashioned tool. Korean Meat and Vegetable DumplingsGun ManduMakes 32 dumplings, serving 4 as a main course, 6 to 8 as a snack or starterMeat and vegetable dumplings such as these are a standard offering at Korean dumpling and noodle shops. A favorite way to enjoy them is poached in broth for a warming mandu guk soup (page 49), but they are equally fabulous when fried. However, don’t expect the standard Chinese pot sticker. Korean cooks like to panfry at least two sides of their dumplings for a greater amount of crispy-chewy goodness. When made with extra chewy dough comprised of wheat and sweet rice flour, the dumplings are even tastier. Gun mandu may also be quickly deep-fried in 11/4 inches of oil heated to 350°F for 2 to 3 minutes total; the resulting pebbled golden skin is a delightful reminder of American frozen egg roll snacks. Filling1 cup bean sprouts (about 3 ounces) 6 ounces firm tofu2 large scallions (white and pale green parts, reserve dark green part for dipping sauce), finely chopped1/4 cup finely chopped yellow onion2 large cloves garlic, minced and crushed into a paste 1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger, or 1 tablespoon finely minced fresh ginger 1/2 pound ground beef (chuck preferred) or ground pork (fattier kind preferred), coarsely chopped to loosen Scant 1/2 teaspoon salt1/2 teaspoon black pepper11/2 tablespoons Korean, Japanese, or light (regular) soy sauce2 teaspoons sesame oil 1 pound Basic Dumpling Dough (page 22) or Extra Chewy Dough (page 23)Canola oil, for panfrying 2/3 cup Korean Dipping Sauce (page 215)1. To make the filling, blanch the bean sprouts in a saucepan of boiling water for about 20 seconds, or until no longer stiff. Drain, rinse with cold water, and drain again. Use your hands to squeeze excess water from the sprouts. Chop thesprouts into 1/4-inch lengths and put in a bowl.2. To expel water from the tofu, put it in a cotton (not terry cloth) kitchen towel. Gather the towel up and, standing over a sink, firmly squeeze on the tofu. Unwrap the towel and add the crumbled tofu to the bean sprouts. Use the dull edge of a knife or plastic dough scraper, if needed, to remove the tofu from the towel. Use a fork or spatula to mash any remaining chunks of tofu. Add the scallions, onion, garlic, ginger, and meat to the bean sprouts and tofu. Stir and lightly mash the ingredients so that they start commingling. 3. In a small bowl, stir together the salt, pepper, soy sauce, and sesame oil. Pour the seasonings over the meat and vegetable mixture, then stir and fold the ingredients together. Break up any large chunks of beef and briskly stir to blend the ingredients into a cohesive, thick mixture. To develop the flavors, cover with plastic wrap and set aside at room temperature for 30 minutes, or refrigerate overnight and return to room temperature for dumpling assembly. Makes about 2 cups.4. Meanwhile, form 16 wrappers from half of the dough. Aim for wrappers that are about 31/4 inches in diameter (see page 24).5. Before assembling the dumplings, line a baking sheet with parchment paper. (If you plan to refrigerate the dumplings for several hours, or freeze them, lightly dust the paper with flour to avoid sticking.) Hold a wrapper in a slightly cupped hand. Scoop up about 1 tablespoon of filling with a bamboo dumpling spatula, dinner knife, or fork and position it slightly off-center toward the upper half of the wrapper, pressing and shaping it into a flat mound and keeping about 1/2 to 3/4 inch of wrapper clear on all sides. Fold, pleat, and press to enclose the filling and create a half-moon, pea pod, or pleated crescent shape (see pages 26 to 29). Place the finished dumpling on the prepared baking sheet. Repeat with the other wrappers, placing the finished dumplings on the baking sheet at least 1/2 inch apart. Cover the dumplings with a dry towel as you form wrappers from the remaining dough and fill them.Assembled dumplings can be covered with plastic wrap, refrigerated for several hours, and cooked straight from the refrigerator. Or, freeze them on their baking sheet until hard (about 1 hour), transfer them to a zip-top freezer bag, pressing out excess air before sealing, and keep them frozen for up to 1 month; partially thaw, using your finger to smooth over any cracks that may have formed during freezing, before cooking. 6. To panfry the dumplings, use a medium or large nonstick skillet; if both sizes are handy, cook two batches at the same time. Heat the skillet over medium-high heat and add enough oil to film the bottom. Add the dumplings, one at a time, placing them on one of their sides. Don’t let the dumplings touch. Fry the dumplings for 1 to 2 minutes, until they are golden or light brown on the one side. Using chopsticks, and maybe a spatula, too, turn each dumpling to brown another side, 1 to 2 minutes longer. 7. Holding the lid close to the skillet to lessen the dramatic effect of water hitting hot oil, use a kettle or measuring cup to add water to a depth of roughly 1/4 inch; you will use about 1/3 cup water for each skillet. The water will immediately sputter and boil vigorously. Cover the skillet with a lid or aluminum foil, lower the heat to medium, and let the water bubble away until it is mostly gone, 8 to 10 minutes. After 6 to 8 minutes, move the lid or foil so that it is slightly ajar to allow steam to shoot out from underneath. This lessens the drama of condensation dripping down onto the hot oil when you remove the lid. 8. When you hear sizzling noises, remove the lid. Let the dumplings fry for another 1 to 2 minutes, until the bottoms are brown and crisp. (At this point, you can also brown the third side, if you want.) Turn off the heat, wait for the cooking action to cease, and then use a spatula to transfer the dumplings to a serving plate. Display them with their crisp sides facing up. 9. Serve with the dipping sauce in a communal bowl for people to help themselves, or divided up among individual rice bowls or large dipping sauce dishes. Eat these with chopsticks in one hand and a spoon or rice bowl in the other to catch any drips. Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Arm yourself with a tortilla press, a hand cranked pasta maker or even just a tiny rolling pin, and you are good to go to make your own dough and Asian dumplings. You can rig up a steamer, but the bamboo ones aren’t very pricy if you own a wok. I don’t deep fry, but if you do, your Fry Daddy will be very handy. These tidbits are great appetizers or entrees and I’ve yet to meet anyone who didn’t like little bits of flavored filling wrapped in tender chewy dough. I’m certainly a fan. Steamed, fried, baked, boiled, whatever, they are great.Almost every country has their version of these–a thrifty way to stretch valuable protein remnants and make a relatively quick cooking tidbit. Meat was too precious to waste. Perhaps the scrawny bird your Mongolian hunter husband brought in (bad luck, honey, you’ll get that deer next time, I know it) won’t feed six, so chop it up, mix with veg, stuff into dough and steam quickly over the fire under a wok. Hey, this is tasty and filling! The Mongolians have mantu, the Chinese jaotzi, the Japanese shu mai and gyoza, the Koreans have mandu, and across Asia from Japan and Southeast Asia to the Silk Road end in Central Asia, you have these pastries and dumplings.I didn’t see a recipe exactly like a Japanese acquaintance’s gyoza. His are very good and he claims another friend of mine ate 40 of them at a go. I don’t think she did, he was kidding me, but I had them at dinner and well, I would eat 40 of them if no one were looking. The Chinese water dumplings with pork and napa cabbage are pretty similar; the secret to this recipe is the cabbage making the pork juicy and savory. The dipping sauces are a must: I can’t eat any dumpling without mixing up a batch of soy sauce based something.The book gives you methods for making dough and reasons NOT to limit yourself to grocery store premade wrappers. And how to hand form the dumplings (hint: those presses you buy with crimps on them, no. Pinch those dumplings closed with a secure braid to keep the filling from leaking out. It’s not that bad.)In addition to steamed or boiled, there are recipes for pastry dough filled things like samosas (peas, potato and spices inside a dough that gets fried or baked.) Also spring rolls (Egg rolls to us Americans),I recommend you try the Napa and pork dumplings and maybe the vegetarian crystal dumplings first–we love those locally at a place that serves them with hot chili oil. Addictive.If you like the pastries and dumplings in your local Asian restaurant, you can make them from this book. I never even get to the more obscure ones because I like my favorites so much, but there are plenty of great things to try and as long as you MAKE ENOUGH OF THEM, you can have pretty great party food. A big plate of these for a first course, and the rest of dinner can be pretty simple. Because people will glom onto the dumplings and only drop off when they are gone. If you invite me, word to the wise, make more than 40. Way more.

⭐Too intailed

⭐There is a reason that this book has so many rave reviews. It deserves every single one of them. If you think about it, dumplings are “every day” food for many Asians. Yet, non-Asians, such as myself, would not normally dare to think, “I can do this.”, even with the crutch of prepared wrappers, until Ms. Nguyen demystified it for us. She gave me the confidence to believe that, yes, indeed, I could do this. And you know what, with her exquisite attention to detail, she is right. I can.Andrea Nguyen makes the preparation of these food items seem normal, and that’s just what they are – a normal thing to Asian cooks. It is only us non-Asians that make the normal, exotic.I love this book for all the reasons that others have written here about; her explanation of ingredients, the preparation of those ingredients, the detailed explanations of what each step should “look” like. Even better, she explains what to do with left over ingredients, what you can do ahead of time, and how you should think about serving her recipes.I made her sticky rice in lotus leaf packets for a dinner party for 20 people, and they were a hit. I had tried to make these before I had this cookbook, but the recipe I used didn’t provide the detailed instructions I needed to prepare the lotus leaves correctly. As a result, my first attempts without this cookbook were delicious but not anything I wanted to serve to company. Ms. Nguyen’s explanation about how to cut down the lotus leaves was priceless, and now I make these with confidence and applause. My guests are still talking about them.Ms. Nguyen is a cookbook author who delights in the knowledge that someone using her instructions will someday be as good as she is at making her recipes. It is obvious that she delights in our success even if the first attempt is not beautiful. I made some really misshapen har gow. They were ugly, but delicious. Her exhortations to keep at it even if they don’t look exactly right are just the encouragement I need to keep trying. Because she writes with so much encouragement, I know I will make a proper har gow one of these days, AND more importantly, that I will have fun trying to do it.If you like to know the whys of how something you love to eat is made, then Andrea Nguyen’s books are for you. She is a rare gem among cookbook authors. I can’t recommend her books more.

⭐I am able to recreate in a rather amateur fashion (as I am no great cook) most of the dumplings from this book. The dumpling skins are worth the hassle (or not, as they are actually very simply done especially if you have a pasta machine kicking about in the back cupboard) as they taste better than the ones bought in the Chinese supermarkets (which are rather course and tasteless). Once the basic is learned, you could just experiment with the fillings of your choice.

⭐This book is crazy amazing! I’m working my way through it and so far flavours have been spot-on authentic – take it from a Southeast Asian. Instructions are a bit lengthy but incredibly thorough. Shop-bought frozen dumplings are now dead to me.

⭐Good book. Lovely recipes. I recommend.

⭐easy to follow, great tastes

⭐This book is just what I have been looking for. I have to drive quite a distance to find a Chinese grocer so have been experimenting with making my own wrappers with mixed success. This book explains the many different types of doughs and also has great tips when working with the tapioca and wheat flours. I don’t mind the American measurements and find them much easier then having to weigh everything. I am so happy to be able to make my own dim sum that actually taste great and look pretty. The author has a web site that has recipes and tips.

Keywords

Free Download Asian Dumplings: Mastering Gyoza, Spring Rolls, Samosas, and More [A Cookbook] in PDF format
Asian Dumplings: Mastering Gyoza, Spring Rolls, Samosas, and More [A Cookbook] PDF Free Download
Download Asian Dumplings: Mastering Gyoza, Spring Rolls, Samosas, and More [A Cookbook] 2009 PDF Free
Asian Dumplings: Mastering Gyoza, Spring Rolls, Samosas, and More [A Cookbook] 2009 PDF Free Download
Download Asian Dumplings: Mastering Gyoza, Spring Rolls, Samosas, and More [A Cookbook] PDF
Free Download Ebook Asian Dumplings: Mastering Gyoza, Spring Rolls, Samosas, and More [A Cookbook]