Gyoza

Gyoza (or jiaozi)  are a type of Japanese pan fried dumplings or pot stickers that are first fried then steamed.  I stumbled across these when I was looking for something to make that would feel like I was back in college eating eating Chinese takeout or Japanese food with D or the girls from the Threshold. They definitely hit the spotn, but these are not what I would call  simple to make.  In fact they are rather time consuming and require a multi-step process. They are oh so tasty though, lingering in the mind days or even months after the last one has disappeared, until the next batch comes around.  A very good reason to make a large batch and stick some in the freezer for a special treat on later days.  Making with a group of friends could also make it a bit more fun.

The first step is to make the wrappers

Make the dough. Roll into logs. Chop up the logs into sections, and flatten each piece into a nice little gyoza wrapper.  La Fuji Mama blog (lafujimama.com) has a great tutorial for how to make these.  The only change I would recommend is to use a tortilla press if you have one, especially if you have any tendency toward arthritis or tendonitis in your hands or arms.  Much easier, and much faster.  The first time I made these, I rolled them out by hand, and it seemed to take FOREVER.  The second time I used the tortilla press and it was a much less tedious job.  Wrap them up in saran wrap and stick them in the fridge for gyoza stuffing another day.

Or you can skip this part altogether and head for the grocery store and a nice package of won-ton wrappers that have already been nicely prepared for you.

The second step is the stuffing of the gyoza.  I'll give you my recipe version here, but I'd recommend looking up another recipe elsewhere online for the filling (such as the one at steamykitchen.com) as with all my food sensitivities and the need to leave out "all the good stuff", the result is most likely a rather bland version of the real thing. There are also some really great step by step guides to see what each and every step should look like.

Gyoza Filling:
4 c minced Napa cabbage
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 lb ground pork (or    if partially cooked and chopped up finely)
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 T minced green onion (just the greens)
1 tsp olive or canola oil
1/4 tsp sugar

Mix everything together until well blend.

Once the filling is ready, take out your gyoza wrappers and set up for the next time consuming part-- filling and folding all the little  individual dumplings.  It is best to take out just a few of the wrappers a time and leave the rest wrapped in the plastic wrap so they don't dry out.

Take a wrapper and carefully spoon a small amount of the filling into the wrapper.  Swipe the rim of the wrapper with  water, fold the top half of the wrapper over the filling, and then carefully begin pleating the wrapper in toward the center from both sides, pressing down to seal the dumpling.  I'm still working on mastering this, but there is something very restful and meditative about the repetitiveness of this step(for the first half of the batch anyway, then you just want to be done.) Set aside on a tray, and move on to the next one.  Once they are stuffed, you can either cook them up straight away or stick the pan in the freezer to allow them to freeze. Once they are frozen, dump into a container or a ziploc bag in the freezer.

To cook them up, put oil in a frying pan and carefully place the stuffed gyoza in the pan and fry until they have a crispy crust on the bottom.  In the pan like this with their pleated edges and stuffed round tops, they make me think of a cloud of little jelly fish drifting along in the current.
As you can see from the photo if you compare my gyoza folding with the "real" thing, I have a ways to go in perfecting my technique, but  funny looking or not, it doesn't seem to hurt the taste any! 



 Then comes the steaming. Throw in a 1/2 cup of water and cover the pan with a lid (I usually use the lid from my stock pot). Allow them to steam until most of the water has boiled off. Maybe 5 minutes at the most?  By this point they should be nicely steamed and, more importantly, cooked through.

Scoop up a few and eat with your favorite dipping sauce.  Many seem to be some version of soy sauce and vinegar and oil.  So far I have mostly gone the lazy route and just eaten with my speedy version of foy (fake soy) sauce, a mix of vinegar, molasses, salt, garlic, and, occasionally, plum jam.

Happy eating!

Goetta anyone?

Goetta is a Cincinnati staple.  An old-style German food from days past made of a mix of ground pork, ground beef, and pinhead or steel-cut oats.  It reminds me a bit of the Pennsylvania Dutch scrapple I grew up on, in that it is quite tasty but also a bit of an acquired taste.

After years of living in Cincinnati, I decided on a whim last week to try to make my own.  I started by looking up a slow-cooker recipe, picking Sarge's Slow Cooker Goetta. 

Since there is one of me, I dutifully halved the recipe.  I should have thought through the quantities a bit more though, as I still ended up with a great deal more goetta than I had anticipated. Two loaf pans full!

Silly me for thinking he was talking about a normal sized slow cooker. Good thing I like goetta.

After letting it all cool, I sliced most of it up into slices and froze it for later use.












 Like tonight for a tasty midnight snack of goetta fried up with eggs.

P.S. You really don't need the ketchup. That is just my Pennsylvania Dutch roots showing.  I will have to pay attention at the diner next time I go what fellow Cincinnatians put on their goetta.

Celebrating With Harlequin Cake

Harlequin- a buffoon in parti-colored tights

When Mom came to visit this past weekend, she brought the most marvelous cake along - a very elegant and relatively simple cake to make.  A little something extra special for a celebration!

Ingredients:
1 small (chocolate) cake
1 c whipping cream
3 T sugar
Blueberry pie filling
Strawberry filling

The base of the cake was a chocolate cake made with only 3 T of cocoa.  Unfortunately, I don't have the recipe for this, but I am sure another type of cake would taste nice as well.

Next you mix up the whipped cream topping. We used heavy whipping cream with 3 T sugar whipped until it had stiff peaks.  If you've never made your own whipped cream, you'll find it has a very nice, not too sweet, taste and is well worth making from scratch if you have a mixer.  Just don't beat it so far it goes grainy and separates out into butter and buttermilk.  Reserve a third of the whipped cream for  piping like frosting. The cake was spread over with the whipped topping like a layer of frosting. Then the reserved whipped cream was used to draw four lines across the cake in one direction  and then turned 90 degrees and another four lines drawn to create a cross-hatch pattern. Lastly, a circle was drawn around the outside edge of the cake.

Into  squares formed by the cross-hatch, carefully spoon the pie fillings in alternating squares to create the "parti-colored" pattern. We used strawberry and blueberry.

In Memory of Midge

Disclaimer: I apologize if I ramble on and on, but this post is more a therapeutic writing exercise for me then it is for your enjoyment, but I hope you enjoy reading it anyways.

I have been meaning to do this post for a while, but sometimes things just seem too overwhelming until I actually sit down to do them. There were times when I would get behind at work and I would feel this way, it was like a heavy weight I would carry around always there nagging me in the back of my mind, but eventually I found a system that worked. An hour or two in the office each week, usually with Midge and I would feel so much lighter. I used to tell Midge "I feel so much better" after I had taken care of the pile of charts she or Lynn had stacked up for me. When I switched jobs I wasn't sure I would manage to stay organized without those weekly visits, but I did, when there is change you always find a way. Midge told Melissa to take care of me and even just yesterday when I asked Melissa if she could help me with something she said "Only for you, Kristin, I promised Midge I would look after you." It always brings a smile to my face, but these days it is a bittersweet smile.

It was a shock to me when I showed up in the office one morning and Melissa asked me if I had talked to Sharon and I said no, why?, and she said Sharon had called and said her mom died. I couldn't quite believe it - didn't want to believe it, but you can't go back, some part of you knows its true from that moment on.

I don't really recall exactly when I first met Midge, but I suppose it was that first day I worked with Sharon. I was working in a nursing home, and my coworker was looking to change jobs, so I brought her an ad from the newspaper, but after a short while she gave it back to me and said they needed an OT more than an OTA and she thought I should check it out. Who knew when I started work there in October of 2003 what a special group of people I would come to know. Initially it was mostly over the phone, but over the next 6 1/2 years I worked for Sharon, I got to know them better. I am not sure if I initially knew that Midge was Sharon's mom, and Lynn (who worked the office on the day's Midge was off) and Shirley (who picked up and delivered paperwork sometimes) were Midge's sisters, but at some point I was told or figured it out. I do remember I had quite a time figuring out who they meant by Gabbee and I was too embarrassed to ask - they would say "when Gabbee picked the boys up..." or "Gabbee will be late for lunch", it was always said as if I should know who that was, I knew it was one of them and eventually I figured out it was Midge. I think partly what threw me was Sharon called her Gabbee and I thought wouldn't she just call her "mom", but nope they all called her Gabbee.

I think I frequented half the restaurants in Wooster with them - Jake's (always on Tuesdays for 1/2 priced burgers), Wild Ginger, The Parlor, Green Leaf or was that Farmer Boy (I'm not sure, one of them), Beuhler's Milltown, Honey Baked Ham, The Shack (Midge is the first and probably only person I ever new that was actually referenced on a menu in a restaurant - I can't quite remember if Lynn or Shirley were listed there too or not), and of course Sue Min's. Sue Min's was always on Friday. Only chinese restaurant I know where I've been served baklava, out comes the check fortune cookies ..... and a plate of baklava. I think I only afforded this pleasure when I dine there with them, but I don't turn it down it is good baklava. We walked around WoosterFest and talked about picking blueberries.

Midge was always very welcoming, not that they others weren't, they all were, but she kept me up to date on Sharon's boys activities and she always had hot water for tea when I was at the office (Lynn probably did too, but today I am thinking about Midge) and if the cleaning lady brought cookies she would always share them. I remember joining them at The Shack one evening for someone's birthday party and bumming a ride with them from Val's to one of Caleb's sled hockey games, Midge gladly volunteered to let me tag along with them. I was just reminded tonight about last year's charity sled hockey game - I got there late, but Midge came and walked all around the raffle items/baskets with me, even though I am sure she had already gone through them. When I was having numerous eye appointments and having my eyes dilated, she always told me if I ever needed a ride just call. I hate to admit this here, you will all think poorly of me, I am quite embarrassed even to this day to admit it but I once passed a stopped school bus - not intentionally. I had to go to court and they suspended my licenses, but I was able to get work driving privileges that same day. When I got to the office, I was horribly embarrassed to tell Midge, but when I did she said well I would have picked you up if you needed a ride. It made me feel better, like I wasn't a horrible person.

Well I am probably boring you by now, if you are even still reading, just two more things to write. This first thing is kind of a collective thing amongst her and her sisters. She was a very encouraging person, she was one of those people that encourage you to dream big. She always asked me what I was doing, where was my next big trip to. I want to go to Europe someday and I had told her that, and I remember one time she told me "You went to Paraguay for a weekend, surely you can go to Europe" or something to that affect. I never forgot that, it is not that I can't go, it is that I don't take the time. I ask myself sometimes what holds me back, who knows, but I haven't gone yet, but I guarantee when I do I will think of Midge. It was other things too, I took a class for Ohio Certified Volunteer Naturalist, but then I got busy with work and I didn't really do anything with it, but she always used to ask me about it, said she could see me with one of those hats and a bird on my shoulder.

The second is the last time I saw her. I took time that day, I didn't have a lot of time, because I had to pick someone up, but I stopped to see her. She had fallen and broken her ankle or foot or something and wasn't allowed to put any weight on it. I had made some cookies - Butter Horns, she ate one and saved the rest for later. We chatted a little and then I had to go. I took time that day and I am glad. Some might say, I take time for people, which I do, but not always, I don't know that many of us take time as often as we should, but I know I don't always take time for my dreams, good or bad I don't know, but she made me think about it. As I was writing this I was thinking about one other thing she used to tell me. When I couldn't make it to lunch she used to say, "You're going to let a silly thing like work get in the way of lunch." It used to make me laugh. I think a good work ethic is important, but there is some truth to that, work isn't everything.

The butter horns I shared with Midge, a recipe I got from a neighbor years ago, definitely not good for you.

Butter Horns

4 cups flour

1 1/2 cup sour cream

1/2 cup sugar

2 egg yolks

1 lb butter

Filling:

1 1/2 cup ground nuts

1 1/2 cup sugar

1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Mix flour, sugar, and butter. Stir in sour cream and egg yolks. Form 2

balls. Refrigerate 2 hours. Divide each ball in 3.

Roll out as pie. Spread with 1/2 cup filling mixture. Cut in 12-14 pie

wedges and roll up like crescent rolls. Repeat with remaining

portions.

Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.

A sour cream dough

Topped with nuts and sugar.

Rolled up in crescents and baked.

Well Midge, I feel better already, just a few more things on my stack that I've been putting off.

"Dutch Goose", Hog Maw, or whatever else you want to call it but it's still Pig Stomach

We enjoyed a wonderful Christmas day together. Started off at church and then home to do some cooking.

Here is the Colonel Mustard making a Grilled Crostini with Brie, Prosciutto, Arugula and Figs.

We made the bread earlier - an italian bread called pugliese. We started Christmas eve making the biga and finished it in the morning before church. Very good.

He made a few with a pesto brie (that I had gotten at Jungle Jim's) and the rest with regular brie, and truthfully I didn't like the pesto brie, so I won't be trying any more fancy bries - give me plain and I will dress it up myself or eat it by itself.

I made soup, a spinach tortellini soup. I made the tortellini Christmas eve, so it was pretty easy to throw together. The broth was just a boxed broth labeled tuscany broth, but it was very good and then I just tossed in the tortellini and topped with parsley. Delicious.

Vanilla Bean made a "dutch goose" or hog maw or whatever you want to call it. Straight up it is stuffed pig stomach. We have been talking about having pig stomach for Christmas dinner for a number of years so strange as it may seem, it was with great excitement that it was served up this year. It was good and served with a gravy and garnished with parsley, cranberries, and orange slices. Tasty.

We had gotten it pre-stuffed, and decided sometime we will have to stuff it ourselves. This stuffing had sausage, potatoes, onions and bread stuffing, which I think I would prefer it without the bread, so some day we will try it ourselves and I think I will try it with cabbage too.

Mom fixed a rhubarb raspberry roly-poly and english custard sauce. Fabulous.

Dad meticulously made red velvet cake, which he cut into 4 layers and frosted with a delicious buttercream frosting. Decadent.

The first course of soup and grilled crostini.

Second course of stuffed pig stomach.

Third course of Red Velvet Cake and roly-poly with custard sauce.

And for something different a little chai bubble tea.