Dumplings!

Okay, so I lied about writing about my dining experience with Caroline. That will come soon, I promise! Today I wanted to write about the dumplings I made for dinner on Sunday night.

On Sunday I was pretty bummed. I’d spent the weekend cooped up doing Spanish homework while my friends went out and did awesome fun things, because somehow I’ve ended up with the most work-intensive courseload of my college career. So I was bummed about homework, and bummed that a lot of really cool people in my life will no longer be in my life in a few months, and bummed about a lot of other stuff as well. I was bummed. I needed cheering up, which of course meant I needed to eat something delicious. But after splurging on my delicious Villa Rosa dinner with Caroline (which, really, I’ll tell you about eventually), I needed to make something delicious and also cheap. Which made me think of a post I’d read recently on the Amateur Gourmet about do-it yourself Chinese dumplings:

http://www.amateurgourmet.com/2010/01/do-it-yourself.html

It was perfect! I love dumplings, and I love things that are easy to make! I went to Stop & Shop (which is slightly more expensive than ShopRite but it’s not constantly crowded with disgruntled Trenton residents and their screaming children. Grocery shopping should be pleasant, not a hassle!), where they didn’t have ground pork, but they did have a package of pork tenderloin on sale! I decided I could chop it up real thin and that would be just fine… This was a mistake.

I mean, it turned out quite tasty, but it took me about 30 minutes to cut up the whole thing of meat. 30 messy, gross minutes. The meat wanted to squirm out from under my knife with each slice, and it had been packaged in some kind of slimy fluid. Eugh. I also decided to cook while im-ing, so every few minutes I would look at my computer screen, and if I needed to reply to someone I would wash the gross gooey pork slime off my hands, type my reply, and then go back to cutting. Probably not the best idea, but a girl needs her Internet. And the good news was my bad mood was already dissolving! The anticipation of the delicious meal ahead of me along with the warm company of my computer and the delightful sounds of the Dirty Projectors were doing wonders for me. Hooray cooking!

Everything else was pretty easy- I just followed the instructions in the video. The hardest part for sure was the dough. It is just mixing flour and water, and that’s all well and good, but I don’t have a rolling pin. So I decided to just tear out little chunks of dough and smash them in my hands to flatten ‘em… this took me roughly an hour. I really need to get a rolling pin.

Once everything was all done, though, I tossed the dumplings in a pot of boiling water -which I’m glad no one documented, because me putting things in boiling water consists of me standing a few inches back and throwing the food towards the pot while screaming. I’m really scared of getting splashed by boiling water! Anyway, I waited until they were floating at the top of the water, and then just scooped them out (with a slotted spoon, not my bare hands) and I had delicious dumplings! The dough was super thick and filling, so if you’re more into paper-thin dumpling pastry you might wanna try those wonton wrappers Adam mentions.

I made the ginger/vinegar/soy sauce and it was super-tasty and a perfect compliment for the dumplings. And, best of all, by this point I was in a great mood! I was totally impressed at having cooked such a legit meal for myself. That is the word Gavin gave it, when he biked over to taste some after I im-ed him a link to Adam’s blog (you know, while I was slicing my pork). He bit in and exclaimed:

“Wow, Rachel, these are legit!”

So, in conclusion, if you have a rolling pin, and you hunt down ground pork, I definitely recommend these! You’ll be so impressed with yourself.