Egg Dumplings and Stuffed Cakes

Back in Shanghai, my relatives would make these egg dumplings for a special occasion or big family get together. A thin layer of beaten egg rather than a flour dough is used as a wrapper; think of it like a mini omelet. Traditionally, a wok or a ladle is used to make the egg wrapper and it's a very delicate and time consuming process.

I used way too much egg for the first wrapper and ended up with a thick egg taco. The next few wrappers spread into blobs that resembled various landmasses rather than circles. Many wrappers tore when I tried to close the dumpling, some exploded with filling. After botching almost a dozen dumplings, I finally got the hang of it. A few hours later, I made a little over two dozen dumplings. They were delicious but I would not recommend making them; they just aren't worth the time and effort.

Notes:
- The recipe makes a lot of filling, enough for a full dumpling dough recipe: (3 C flour, 1 C water, 1 tsp salt). Any leftover filling can be stir fried and eaten with rice.
- The mushrooms are cooked first to bring out their flavor and the chives are cooked a bit to wilt them down.

Pork, Chive, and Mushroom Filling

3/4 lb ground pork
3 C packed chopped Chinese chives/leek
1/2 C chopped rehydrated dried shiitake mushrooms
2 Tbsp soy sauce
2 Tbsp Shao hsing rice wine
1 egg
1 Tbsp cornstarch
1 tsp grated ginger
1/4 tsp white pepper
1/2 tsp sugar

Heat 1 tsp of vegetable oil in a nonstick skillet over medium high heat. Add the shiitake mushrooms and stir fry for a minute, then add the chives and cook just until the chives start to wilt (do not cook them fully). Set aside to cool.

Mix everything together to make the filling.

Egg Dumplings
1/2 of the pork and chive recipe
4 eggs beaten with some salt and 4 Tbsp of water/milk
Vegetable oil

Heat 1/2 tsp of vegetable oil in a small nonstick skillet or wok over medium or medium low heat. Add only a tablespoon (resist the temptation to add more) of the beaten egg mixture to the skillet and tilt the egg mixture around to form a very thin circular wrapper about 3 to 3 1/2 inches in diameter. The skillet should be hot enough so that the egg slightly sizzles when it hits the pan. The pan is too hot if the egg sizzles loudly and sets immediately as it hits the pan before you can finish swirl the wrapper. I found that the best technique is a combination of tilting the pan and using the back of the tablespoon to push the egg out to make a circle.

Add a mounded teaspoon of filling to the center of the egg wrapper and use a spatula to flip half of the wrapper over the filling. Press around the crescent edges to seal the filling in as the egg fully cooks. Allow the dumpling to cook for a few more seconds in the pan then set aside. At this point the filling is not cooked. Repeat with making the rest of the dumplings. 4 beaten eggs will make around 26 dumplings.

Traditionally, the dumplings are fully cooked in hot pot or soup but I'm sure you can also steam them to fully cook the filling. I gently boiled them in some chicken stock for about 10 minutes to cook them through.




I ended up making way too much filling because I drew the line at 4 eggs, so I made a flour dough to make stuffed cakes. The dough is a basic dumpling/potsticker wrapper dough. The stuffed cakes are very similar to a potsticker but are circular and bigger.



Pork, Chive, and Mushroom Stuffed Cakes
Dough (halved basic potsticker wrapper
1 1/2 C flour
1/2 C cold water
1/2 tsp salt


Mix the flour, salt, and water together and form a uniform smooth dough.

Let the dough rest for 30 minutes.

Divide the dough in half and then each half into 4 - 5 pieces. I got about 10 stuffed cakes from this recipe.

Roll a piece of dough into a circle that's about 4 - 5 inches in diameter. Keep the wrapper thicker in the middle and thinner towards the edges.

Add a mounded tablespoon of filling to the center of the wrapper. I wanted to stuff these cakes as full as possible.

Gather up all the edges and pinch close. Then flatten the cake gently into a patty. Set aside on a flour lined sheet and continue to make the rest. Dust off excess flour before cooking. You can also freeze these cakes; first freeze them on a tray then transfer them to a zipper lock bag.

Heat 2 tsp of vegetable oil in a nonstick skillet over medium heat. Pan fry the cakes until both sides are golden brown. Then add 1/4 C of water to the skillet, cover, turn the heat down to low, and steam for 10 minutes. If the pan gets too dry, add another tablespoon of water.

After 10 minutes remove the cover and turn the heat up to medium high. Boil off any remaining water and recrisp both sides.


More dumpling recipes:
Pork and Cabbage Potstickers
Shrimp and Edamame Dumplings (Har Gau)
Sticky Rice Siu Mai

This month's WTSIM is hosted by Johanna of The Passionate Cook. Be sure to check the roundup for more great dumpling recipes.

Bagels: Daring Bakers June

June marks my first Daring Baker's Challenge and this month, Jenny of All Things Edible and Freya of Writing at the Kitchen Table chose Real Honest Jewish Purist's Bagels. I've made a few yeasted baked goods before so I was fairly comfortable with the idea of making bagels. I was ready to break out the KitchenAid for another bout of effortless kneading. That is until I found out we had to knead by hand. To be honest I don't really know how to properly knead by hand so it was definitely a little intimidating. I'm extremely reliant on my KitchenAid, perhaps too reliant. It was something I saved up for and bought many years ago as a teenager and is my most prized kitchen possession. But knowing how to knead by hand is definitely a good skill to know for a baker so I left the beloved mixer alone in the corner and rolled up my sleeves to attack the dough. I made half the recipe because I was afraid of having too many bagels. I'm a little glad I only made half the recipe because the dough was quite stiff and definitely gave me an upper body workout with all the kneading. In fact my right side was even sore the next day! The downside of only making half the recipe is that the bagels were oh soooo delicious and unfortunately making half the recipe meant only 8 bagels, which were quickly devoured in 1.5 days.

The recipe can be found here.

The rules this month:
- Toppings should be savory and nothing should be added to the bagel dough itself.
- Bagels can be filled with anything your heart desires. They tasted delicious plain so I didn't add anything.

Some recipe notes:
Ingredients
I used King Arthur's bread flour, instant yeast, clover honey in the dough, and sugar in the water. Next time, I will only use 1 packet of yeast (2 1/4 tsp) for 4 C of bread flour rather than the 2 Tbsp stated in the recipe.

Kneading
I kneaded for about 15 minutes and left it alone to rise. Then I reread the recipe and it said the dough should be smooth and elastic. My dough wasn't smooth or elastic so I was worried I underkneaded. But I forged ahead with the rest of the recipe and luckily they turned out okay.

Rising
The dough rose extremely quickly. In order to avoid bready bagels, you want to really punch down the dough. I mean REALLY punch it down.

Making the bagels
I used the hole method to make the bagels (making a disc then poking a hole in the middle then stretching it out a little for an even bagel). I was afraid the "snake" method would uncoil in the water. Don't worry if the bagels aren't very pretty, mine were all uneven and lumpy.

Floaters or sinkers?
Although the recipe stated that the bagels should at first sink in the simmering water then float, like many other Daring Bakers, all of my bagels floated immediately as they hit the water.

Toppings
In the end I made five different bagels: plain, sesame seed, poppy seed, Parmesan, and pizza (leftover tomato sauce and some mozzarella). After the initial 25 minutes in the oven, I noticed the pizza ones were getting a little dark so I move the sheet from the middle rack to the lower middle rack (I didn't flip the bagels over). I used pretoasted sesame seeds on the bagels and I was afraid they would burn in the oven but they turned out fine.



You can visit all my fellow Daring Bakers (links on the righthand sidebar) and see what toppings they put on their bagels.

Daikon Cakes

Daikon is a large white radish that's very popular in East Asian cuisine. It can be simmered, dried, pickled, or eaten raw. I love the taste and crispness of raw daikon so I wanted to preserve that crunch and raw bite in these cakes. In making this recipe, I borrowed elements from latkes and crabcakes. The first time I experimented with this idea, I made the cakes thin like pancakes and by the time the outside finished frying, the insides were too cooked and had lost that raw crunch. This time I made the cakes thicker, more like crabcakes, and dredged the outside in some panko for an extra crispy exterior.

Notes:
- Although this dish has the same name as the other daikon cake (luo buo gao), the two cakes are very different.
- The egg and flour serve as binders to hold the daikon together. The first time I made this I used a tiny bit of batter made from flour and water.
- The daikon is first salted to dry out excess moisture.
- You can probably substitute jicama for daikon in this recipe but I haven't tried this.

Crispy and Crunchy Daikon Cakes
3 C packed coarsely grated daikon radish
3/4 tsp salt
2 green onions, minced
1 egg beaten
2 Tbsp flour
1 tsp sesame oil
1/4 tsp white pepper
About 1/2 C panko bread crumbs
Vegetable oil for frying

Coarsely grate the daikon radish and mix with 3/4 tsp of salt. Let this sit in a bowl or colander for 30 minutes.

After the 30 minutes, squeeze the water out of the daikon with your hands. You'll want the daikon really dry.

Mix the daikon with minced green onion, beaten egg, flour, sesame oil, and white pepper. Take 1/3 C of the mixture and form cakes that are about 1/2 in thick. You should get 5 or 6 cakes.

Scatter some panko on a plate and bread the top and bottom of each cake with a layer of panko.

Heat 2 tsp of vegetable oil in a nonstick skillet over medium heat. Panfry the cakes until the bottoms are golden brown. Flip the cakes over, add another 2 tsp of oil, and continue to panfry until the second side is golden brown. Serve with soy sauce if desired.


Links:
My other daikon cake recipe - these are often served at dimsum.

This will be my entry for Weekend Herb Blogging. This week's WHB is hosted by creator, Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen. Be sure to check out the roundup on Sunday/Monday.