Chinese Dumplings

Remember how long long ago, I made super basic dumplings and lamented the fact that I didn’t have more ingredients to make a more detailed/complicated dumpling? Well, here they are!! :O For the record, they were glorious.

There is, however, an unholy amount of chopping/mincing/dicing necessary to make these, so we split up the work between 3 people. We were also not hardcore eough to make our own dumpling wrappers from scratch, so those were purchased at the local Asian market. We’d kinda planned to make this a good couple weeks ago, so…they were just a tad dried out. We made it work though.

Chinese Dumplings

Ingredients:
(Filling)
-ground chicken
-ground beef
-cabbage, diced
-carrots, diced
-garlic, minced
-green onion, finely chopped
-mushroom, diced
-ginger, minced
-sesame oil
-soy sauce
-crushed sesame
(Dipping Sauce)
-soy sauce
-rice wine vinegar
-sesame oil

Instructions:
1) (Dumplings) Cook up the ground meats with sesame oil. Mix in all the vegetables and other goodness. Drizzle in sesame oil and soy sauce. Mix.
2) Put small teaspoon-ish portions of the mixture into the middle of each wrapper.
2) Dip finger in water and trace border of wrapper (it helps to seal em’; using egg would probably work for this too). Fold wrapper in half.
3) (Dipping Sauce) Mix ingredients together.

I’m sorry that there aren’t exact measurements, but it really depends on personal taste and/or how many you want to make. Eyeballing it works pretty well.

Dumpling filling!

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spoils of war

Soupervan’s last day on the Rutgers campus is tomorrow (for this semester, anyway). Sadly, this means it’s probably the last time I’ll be able to go, unless I manage to find them at their summer location (on route 18 by PNC & Hilton!) before I move across the country again.

That said, you should definitely make your way out to the Douglass campus by the student center and get your Soupervan fix on! :D

If you need an incentive, look at these:

 Acapulco Press: queso oaxaca and pablano pepper blend double folded in a multigrain wrap with ancho black bean spread. Mango salsa and crisp greens with halal chicken. (Also has an organic tempeh option.)

Smoked Gouda Broccolini Soup: Smoked gouda cheese, broccolini, kale and onions soup. Comes with a whole wheat roll. The soup is gluten-free.

Hungry Bunny: za’atar hummus, marinated organic dark greens, cherry tomatoes, sweet peppers, shredded carrots, cucumbers and crisp romaine with a roasted garlic tahini dressing in a multigrain wrap. (halal chicken or tempeh option. went with the chicken in this one.)

Cannoli!

 The wraps come with a drink! I went with the agua fresca as usual. They had the Scarletberry Agua Fresca, which is a blend of raspberries, blueberries and strawberries, if I remember correctly.

Monkeybread

6F tradition calls for us to write up a list of the stuff we want, as well as the restaurant of choice for dinner, and the dessert of choice as the “birthday cake.” Although we no longer all live together (which I still think is a crying shame :'( ), we try to continue this tradition as much as possible with as many people as we can get. <3 Last year, I couldn’t figure out what I wanted, but managed to narrow it down to monkeybread, cookie dough cheesecake bars, or an apple tart.

I heard mention from Diana about an “ass cake,” but she informed me that she had actually been saying, “Have you asked about the cake?” A good save, but they did admit later on that they had indeed had an “ass cake” in store for me, in honor of Cosmo. However, since Jun caught the plague and Nadia came over by way of Amtrak (which would have made cake transportation rather difficult), they made Monkeybread in my kitchen and exiled me to the family room for a “sexy pahtee” (stated with a hint of a British accent).

Monkeybread is really, really lumpy-looking (hence, the name, I guess), so they told me to pleaseplease request something smoother the following year so they could make the ass cake a reality. I’m on the opposite end of the coast for the time being though, or I would have requested kahlua cupcakes. :O

Monkeybread

Ingredients:
(Dough)
4 tbsp (1/2 stick or 2 ounces) unsalted butter, divided (2 tablespoons softened, 2 tablespoons melted)
1 cup milk, warm (around 110 degrees)
1/3 cup water, warm (also around 110 degrees)
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 package or 2 1/4 tsp rapid rise, instant or bread machine yeast
3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for work surface
2 tsp table salt

(Brown Sugar Coating)
-1 cup packed light brown sugar
-2 tsp ground cinnamon
-8 tbsp unsalted butter (1 stick or 4 ounces), melted

Instructions:
1) Get oven and pan ready. Preheat oven to 200°F. When oven reaches 200, turn it off. Butter pan with 2 tbsp softened butter. Set aside.
2) Make dough. In a large measuring cup, mix together milk, water, melted butter, sugar, and yeast.
3) Mix flour and salt in standing mixer fitted with dough hook. Turn machine to low and slowly add milk mixture. After dough comes together, increase speed to medium and mix until dough is shiny and smooth, 6 to 7 minutes. (Dough should be sticky, but if it too wet to come together into anything cohesive, add additional 2 tbsp flour.) Turn dough onto lightly floured counter and knead briefly to form smooth, round ball.
4) Mix flour and salt in large bowl. Make well in flour, then add milk mixture to well. Using wooden spoon, stir until dough becomes shaggy and is difficult to stir. Turn out onto lightly floured work surface and begin to knead, incorporating shaggy scraps back into dough. Knead until dough is smooth and satiny, about 10 minutes. Shape into taut ball and proceed as directed.
5) Coat large bowl with nonstick cooking spray or a tbsp of neutral oil. Place dough in bowl and coat surface of dough with more cooking spray or oil. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and place in warm oven until dough doubles in size (~1 hour).
6) For the brown sugar coating, place melted butter in one bowl. Mix brown sugar and cinnamon in a second one.
7) For the bread, flip dough out onto floured surface and gently pat into 8-in. squares.
8 ) Roll each piece of dough into ball. Working one at a time, dip balls in melted butter, allowing excess butter to drip back into bowl. (A fork would be helpful.) Roll in brown sugar mixture, then layer balls in pan, staggering seams where dough balls meet as you build layers.
9) Cover pan tightly with plastic wrap and place in turned-off oven until dough balls are puffy and have risen 1 to 2 inches from top of pan (50-70 min.).
10) To bake the bread, remove pan from oven and heat oven to 350°F. Unwrap pan and bake until top is deep brown and caramel might begin to bubble around edges, 30-35 min. Cool in pan for 5 minutes, then turn out on platter and allow to cool slightly, about 10 minutes.

Pickled Radish

This was one of the side dishes Melanie and I made during Valentine’s Day. :O The only pickled substances I ever eat are pickled cucumbers/carrots with cold noodle dishes, but these were pretty cool. (I don’t think I’d ever eaten radish before this.)

Pickled Radish

Ingredients:
-pickled radish
-rice wine vinegar

Instructions:
1) Slice the pickled radish. Add rice wine vinegar and lay em’ flat on a plate.
2) Consume.

Microwave Baked Apple

Igor found some seriously ginormous Fuji apples and got me some because he is full of awesome/our class knows all too well my tendency to obtain fruit that appears to have been injected with steroids. (Seriously, there’s one as big as my face in there. There were some worries that they would be grainy and not quite so awesome as eat-it-plain apples, so he passed on the suggestion that I could microwave them to make a “poor man’s apple pie.”

They were not in fact grainy, but the idea sounded awesome, so we decided to try it with one anyway. :O Twas a good decision.

Microwave Baked Apple

Ingredients:
-apple, sliced
-cinnamon, to taste
-brown sugar, to taste
-graham crackers (optional)

Instructions:
1) Layer sliced apples into a bowl and add brown sugar and cinnamon.
2) Microwave for ~2 minutes.
3) Consume with or without graham crackers.