Pork and Spinach Gyoza

Pork and Spinach Gyoza

Who doesn’t love a good dumpling?

On any given day – if I get asked what I feel like eating, there’s a good chance that answer, 8 out of 10 times (if not more), would be “dumplings” – particularly duck or pork dumplings, especially if they are pan fried – I do love me a good duck or pork dumpling!

To make pan fried dumplings, I usually purchase frozen dumplings from an Asian grocer at our version of “China town” and steam these, followed by pan frying them to obtain a delicious and lightly crisp result. However, traditionally, ‘pot stickers’ are usually done the other way around i.e. pan fried to lightly brown off the base, and then water is added in after and allowed to cook until the dumplings are steamed to perfection and get that traditional beautiful caramel color on the bottom.

On this occasion, I decided to make them from scratch – dough, filling and all.

If you’re wondering about the difference with a Chinese dumpling and Japanese gyoza, as they are quite similar (like I was, because I wanted to make certain I got the recipe and terminology right), there are a few distinctive characteristics that make them different. Both are made with a flour dough, pinched and can include either a vegetarian or meat filling. However, the Chinese refer to them as “Jiaozi” (Dumpling) or “Wo tip” (Pot stickers), which can be eaten either boiled, steamed, pan fried or deep fried, while the Japanese generally only pan fry these. Also, the Japanese gyoza’s tend to be smaller, have thinner skins and the fillings tend to be lesser and include garlic. The ‘Gyoza’ also tend to be slightly elongated.

With both the pan fried versions, while the Japanese consider ‘gyoza’ as a side dish to compliment rice, the Chinese often consume ‘wo tip’ (Pot stickers) as the main course.

After determining the differences, I decided to dub this post’s recipe as – Pork and Spinach Gyoza!

While this is a time consuming recipe, the results are delicious! It is possible to reduce your prep time down by purchasing frozen gyoza wrappers from an Asian grocer store.

This recipe makes about 30 pieces of gyoza. I would allow for a minimum of 6 – 8 per person if it is being served as a main course meal.

Be sure to adjust quantities accordingly!

 

(Serves 4)

Ingredients – Gyoza Dough:

2 cups All purpose flour
1 tsp Salt
1 cup Water (boiled)

Potato starch or Corn starch (Optional – for dusting – I used All purpose flour)

Gyoza dough

 

Method – Gyoza Dough:

Mix the flour, water and salt – begin with the flour and salt mixture and keep adding the water, a little at a time, as necessary and knead to form the gyoza dough. The dough will lighten spring back when you have reached the correct consistency.

Set aside covered in cling wrap or a damp tea towels (or damp paper towels) to ensure the dough remains moist while you prepare the filling.

 

Ingredients – Gyoza Filling:

500 gm Pork mince
100 gm Baby Spinach (finely chopped)
2 Spring Onions (reserve some of the chopped green stalk for garnish – Optional) OR 1 Onion (finely chopped)
6 cloves of Garlic (finely chopped)
1 Tbsp Soy Sauce
1/2 tsp Five-spice powder
100 gm Canned water chestnuts (drained and chopped)
1 Sliced red chilli
3 tsp Cornflour
2 Tbsp Water
Chili oil OR Sesame oil OR Olive oil OR Vegetable oil (for cooking)

 

Method – Pork and Spinach Gyoza Filling:

Combine all the pork mince, spinach, spring onion OR onion, garlic, soy sauce, five spice powder, chestnuts, 1 tsp cornflour and chili in a bowl and mix well and evenly. Cover and refrigerate for about 30 minutes.

Pork and Spinach filling with onion

Pork and spinach filling

 

Method – Pork and Spinach Gyoza:

Unwrap the prepped cling wrapped or dough covered with a damp tea towels or damp paper towels.

Dust some potato starch, corn starch or all purpose flour onto your work surface. Divide the dough in half, and roll one half out into a log about 4 cm in diameter. Cover up the half currently not being used to avoid the dough drying out.

Cut out pieces from the log, about the width of your finger, and leave covered with cling wrap (OR a damp tea towel OR damp paper towel) until you need to roll out a piece.

Rolled dough into a log

 

Cut up gyoza dough portions

Covered gyoza dough portions

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Roll a cut piece into a ball. Roll out the dough into a circular shape and as thin as you can (about 1mm thick).

Rolling out the cut piece of dough

Rolled out as thin as possible

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Using a 8cm cookie cutter, cut to form a perfect circular shaped gyoza wrapper. Combine the scraps with the covered second half of dough.
Note: You don’t have to use a cookie cutter if you don’t have one, just roll the dough into a circular shape about 8cm in diameter.

Cutting with a cookie cutter

Place wrapper on a plate and dust the plate and between each gyoza wrapper with sufficient potato starch, corn starch or all purpose flour to ensure the stacked wrappers don’t stick together. Ensure wrapper stack is covered with cling wrap while not in use.

Continue the above process until all the dough has been used up.

Remove the refrigerated Pork and Spinach gyoza filling. Mix the remaining 2 tsps of cornflour and water in a small bowl into a paste.

Take a gyoza wrapper and place onto your work space. Brush the edges of the wrapper with the cornflour paste. Place a heaped teaspoon of the filling in the center.

Filling placed in the center of gyoza wrapper

Folded in half

Pinching little pleats onto the gyoza

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seal the gyoza by folding it in half and pinching the edges together with tiny folds.

Folded gyoza piece – top view – notice the slightly concaved shape

 

 

Folded gyoza piece – back

Folded gyoza piece – front

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Place on a plate, a good distance apart, and dust with some potato starch, corn starch or all purpose flour to prevent them from sticking together. Cover with cling wrap until you need to use it.

Gyoza lined on a plate

Continue until all the wrappers are filled.

Note: If you aren’t going to cook all the dumplings, freeze meal portions of some dumplings in a freezer bag or container, with sufficient potato starch, corn starch or all purpose flour sprinkled through (to void them sticking together), for another time.

 

To cook:

Heat a pan to medium-high heat with 3-4 Tbsp of oil (preferably chili oil or sesame oil). Pan fry the dumplings, until the base is lightly browned.

Add in water to just fill in the bottom of the pan, roughly about a 1/2 cm deep. Cover the pan and steam on low heat until the gyoza are lightly translucent and cooked.

Gently lift each dumpling with a suitably sized spatula or rubber encased tongs to make sure it is not sticking and has attained a beautiful golden brown color and is just lightly crisp.

Remove the cooked golden brown based gyoza carefully.

 

And you’re done! The Pork and Spinach gyoza are ready to be served!

Pork and Spinach Gyoza plated

 

Dumplings are generally served with Soy sauce or a Soy sauce based dipping sauce. Might I suggest a simple Soy Chilli Dipping sauce? (Click for recipe!)

Do let me know if you try out this recipe and what you think about it!

Yummy little gyozas in a row

Delicious homemade gyoza

Gyoza Plated

 

Snapper en croûte de sel (Snapper in Salt Crust)

Snapper in salt crust

 

The selection of this recipe for our first challenge for “The French Diaries” was done by my friend D. I don’t usually cook fish too often and was up for the challenge as the ingredients sounded like a beautiful medley of flavours.

Let me just start by saying, I didn’t expect the fish to taste as great as it did! Every mouthful was juicy, moist and delicious! It absorbed all the flavour from the parsley, golden shallots and sliced lemon stuffed within it and a perfectly balanced amount of flavour from the herbed salt crust dough. Cooking the fish well sealed within the dough left the fish flesh very moist and flaky.

This recipe is suited to any decent sized round fish, such as snapper, barramundi or black bream, cleaned with scales left on. Leaving the scales on stops the salt from the dough from infusing the flesh too much and also helps prevent the crust from sticking to the flesh. Do not consume the salt crust after cooking, this is to be discarded.

Although the recipe seems like it would be quite intimidating, it is really quite simple.

I used a red snapper about 500 gm in weight since I was cooking for one. I would allow for about 1/2 kg per person or serve – and adjust the recipe based on the fish size and required number of servings.

Please ensure fresh fish selection – with seafood. It’s generally best to cook it the same day that you purchase it. If it is not possible to cook it on the same day, please clean the fish and observe safe storage and handling and try to cook with fish within 2 days at most as this dish relies on the fish’s natural flavour.

Adapted from “French for Everyone” by Manu Feildel
(Serves 4)

Ingredients – Fish:

1 barramundi (2 Kg), snapper OR black bream (cleaned with scales left on)
15 sprigs flat-leaf parsley
3 Golden shallots, thinly sliced
1 Lemon sliced
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper (for seasoning)

Ingredients – Salt crust dough:

1 Kg Plain flour
1 Kg Coarse rock salt
2 Tbsp Thyme Leaves
1/3 cup OR 2 Tbsps Fennel seeds
650ml of water

Method:

Remove all the fish fins. If the fish is too large to fit into your oven, remove the head.

Red Snapper

Snipping off fins

Removing the dorsal fin

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stuff the fish cavity with the parsley, golden shallots and lemon and season the cavity with salt and pepper. If you have a bit of time, lightly sautee these ingredients prior to stuffing the fish to get the flavours going – be sure to pour and juices that escape inside the fish cavity. Set aside.

Flat leaf parsley, Golden shallots, Lemon, Salt, Pepper

Prepped fish ingredients

Stuffing fish cavity

 

 

 

 

 

 

Preheat your oven to 220ºC. Line a baking tray or large baking pan with baking paper.

 

For the salt crust dough, mix all the ingredients a little at a time to form a pliable dough. This takes a little bit of patience. Because of the salt content, the dough can be quite delicate and form cracks/ holes easily, so be sure to handle with care, especially while rolling out.

Salt crust dough prep

Mixing the salt crust dough ingredients

One half of the salt crust dough ready to be rolled out

 

 

 

 

 

 

Divide the dough in half and roll out to form 2 even 5mm thick rectangular sheets (about 60cm x 20cm). The pieces should be 5cm larger than the fish all the way around to allow for sealing well (I rolled out the dough into an oblong shape about the shape of the fish while leaving about 3cm all around to make this and the following steps a bit easier).

Stuffed fish placed on rolled out dough on lined baking tray

Place one rectangle on the lined baking tray or large roasting pan. Carefully place the fish over this. Outline the fish on the first rolled out rectangular sheet with water. Then place the second rolled out rectangular sheet carefully over the top of the fish and seal the edges all around well by tightly sealing the fish all around.

Well sealed stuffed fish with 3cm border

 

 

Cut the dough around the fish (be careful not to damage your roasting pan OR baking tray – perhaps cut the dough on a cutting board prior to transferring the sealed fish to the lined baking dish if it makes this process easier), leaving a 3cm border on all sides.

 

 

Bake the fish at 220ºC for 40 minutes or until the crust is light golden and the fish is cooked through. Personally, I had to leave the fish in for about 50 mins as the dough on the inside felt like it wasn’t cooked through on the inside.

Fish being baked

Salt crusted fish almost ready

Cooked Salt crusted fish

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cut around the edge of the top layer of crust, carefully. This process was a little hard as the salt crust hardens quite a bit, which is good news really as all the flavours and moistness would be well retained. A meat mallet might be required for this process, to break the crust.

Carefully removed and discard the skin and salt crust. The lovely flavoured fish, golden shallots and lemon is ready to serve.

Cracked open salt crusted snapper

Peeled off skin and flaky moist fish

Ready to serve!

Flesh is so moist that it flakes off so easily!

 

 

 

Please do let me know if you try out this recipe and what you think about it.