A dumpling adventure

I've been doing volunteer English tutoring with new migrants to Australia for about seven years now, and it's definitely a two-way street. My students get to polish up their English, and I get to learn about their lives and cultures. My current student, Yan, recently told me of her prowess making Chinese dumplings ... then offered to show me how it is done! So yesterday we discussed the finer points of dumplings. (Yes, there were some opportunities for vocabulary practice in there.)

This is not a recipe, but I did take notes and photos so want to share the adventure.

The filling included minced pork, soy sauce, salt, pepper, and very

finely chopped celery, leeks, shallots, garlic chives, and ginger

The dough only contained plain flour and water ... Yan made

the process of making dumpling wrappers look easy, but I'm sure it's not!

  Dumplings ready to cook

Dumplings can be steamed, boiled or fried. These were boiled, and served

with a very, very hot fresh chilli sauce. Lucky me ;-)

What a wonderful experience! I'll definitely have to try making them myself, while Yan's lesson is fresh in my mind. They were delicious.

If you're interested in dumplings, I recommend Jasmine's blog My Little Dumplings. It offers a delightful romp through the dumpling traditions of the world, complete with recipes, science, history and maths.