My mom's daughter...

I grew up eating my mom's dumplings. I'm very particular about the dumplings I eat. I don't eat store bought and I don't eat restaurant made. Only my mom's or my grandmother's will do.

The Chinese call it "Jiaozi", the Japanese call theirs "Gyoza" and the Koreans call theirs "Mandu". Ultimately they're meat and veggies wrapped in a thin dough. Sometimes it's pan fried (pot stickers), sometimes it's cooked in soup, and sometimes it's steamed. For more info, read about it on Wikipedia.

Fredrik and I experimented with making dumplings on Tuesday night. The result was delicious and left me feeling fuzzy inside. Now I have my own dumplings and I must say, I'm rather proud of myself. It's not as mastered as my mother's or my grandmothers but I think it'll get better.



More photos on flickr with descriptions.

Success!

After some tweaking and reforming, the meatballs turned out alright. Fredrik thinks they taste great. Sometimes I'm a bit skeptical about his compliments on my cooking. (Paranoia set in place by an ex-boyfriend who told me that the pasta I made was gross. How rude.)

Obviously I made more than we can consume in one meal. I halved the recipe from scandinaviancooking.com and it made enough 1 teaspoon meatballs to feed a small party as hors d’œuvres.



So I bagged them in groups of 10 and popped them in the freezer for later consumption.



Fredrik was in Italy for a show on Saturday. I jokingly asked him to bring me back a souvenir of meat. He came home with 2 salami and some prosciutto. He's awesome like that.

the verdict is in...

they're a bit bland... i'm gonna have to remix and reform...

experimenting with meat...

i've got a wee craving for a bit of meatballs...
since we bought some ground beef the other day, i've decided to experiment with making my own meatballs...
i pulled a recipe from scandinaviancooking.com with some alterations of my own...
i haven't cooked them yet... they're in the fridge... i made formed a plate full last night and put them in the freezer to keep their shape...
i think i might cook a few in a wee bit to see how the flavouring turned out... if they're bland i'm gonna have to thaw the formed ones, make some adjustments and then form 'em all over again...
here goes nothing...