Gyoza

Gyoza is originally a Chinese dish. It is called 锅贴 "guo tie" or 煎饺 "jian jiao" which translate to english as pot sticker and fried dumpling respectively.

It is relatively easy to make and the dish makes good dim sum or even can go with rice. Some chinese likes to have them with a bowl of sour-spicy soup. To make thing easy, I have opted for the ready made skin. But if you are more adventurous, I have included a recipe for the skin as well.

Ingredients:
Filling
- 200 g ground pork
- Cabbage finely chopped
- Chives finely chopped
- Sake
- Soya sauce, salt, and pepper
- Sesame oil

Skin
- 170 ml water
- 200g flour

Peperation:
Skin
- Mix the water and the flour to a dough that should not be sticky but as soft as an ear lobe.
- Put a wet towel over the dough, and let it stand for several minutes.
- Separate the dough in 30 pieces, and form each of them to very thin discs with a diameter of about 10 cm.

Filling
- Mix the cabbage, chives and the ground pork all together, and add some salt, pepper, soya sauce, sake, and sesame oil. Mix it all very well.

Preparing the Gyoza
-Put some of the filling onto a piece of dough. The filling should be suffice for 30 gyoza pieces.
-Moisten the edge of the dough with water. Moisten only a semicircle, not all the way around.
- Close the gyoza.

Frying the Gyoza
- Add some oil to the frying pan and it up.
- Place the gyoza in the pan and fry it the bottom side is slightly brown. (You don't have to flip the gyoza)
- Add boiling water into the pan till the water covers 1/3 of the gyoza.
- Cover the pan with a lid.
- When the water vaporized add in 2 teaspoons of sesame oil and fry for another 1 minute.
- Remove the gyoza and you are done.

Dipping sauce can be made with vinegar and shredded ginger.

Pumpkin Soup

We went to Myer two Saturday ago to get a blender as old blender we brought from the dot has failed us. Didn't know that now blender can cost as much as over $200. Those highly priced blenders have functions like soup, smoothie, shake blending mode, huh? I thought to make those, you just simply put the mixture in the blender and switch on the blades to spin. Seriously do you really need to pay that much to be an idiot? Well, we settled for one on sale which cost us $49.95.

Here is a recipe for a bowl of hearty warm pumpkin soup during winter. Enjoy!

For 2-4 serves

Ingredient:

• 400 grams diced pumpkin (butter nuts will be sweeter)
• 1 chopped onion
• 2 cloves crushed garlic
• 4 cups stocks
• 1 tbsp oil

Preparation:

Heat up a pot on medium heat, fry the onion and garlic with oil till fragrant. Add the diced pumpkin and toss till the pumpkin is coated with the onions. Next, add stock and turn the flame to high. Let the soup comes to boil and then turn the heat low to simmer the pumpkin with a lid on the pot. Turn off the heat when pumpkin is soft. Let the soup cool slightly before blending it in a blender. Once blended to a smooth consistency, return the mixer over low heat and add salt to taste.

If you like creamy soup, replace half cup of stock with milk.

Chocolate Chip Banana Muffin

A quick 30mins recipe. Moist and nice.

Ingredients:

• 60g butter
• 2 cups flour
• 4 tsp baking powder
  
• 1/2 cup caster sugar
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 eggs
• 2 ripe bananas, mashed
• 1 cup chocolate chip

Preheat oven to 200°C. Line a medium muffin tray (12 sections) with baking paper.

Melt butter in a small saucepan and set aside to cool slightly. Sift flour into a mixing bowl and stir in sugar. Make a well in the centre of dry ingredients. Lightly beat milk, eggs and butter in a bowl. Add the mixture to dry ingredients, along with mashed banana. Using a wooden spoon, gently mix ingredients until just combined. Stir in chocolate chips. Don't beat the mixture or the muffins will be tough.

Spoon the mixture evenly into the muffin cases. Bake for 20 minutes or until firm on top when lightly touched (get an adult to help with this). Leave in the tray for 3 minutes. Transfer the muffins to a rack to cool.

Gyu Don

This Japanese dish consisting of a bowl of rice topped with beef and onions simmered in a mildly sweet sauce flavored with dashi, soy sauce and mirin.

The beef should be thinly sliced with thickness of about 1 mm and preferably beef brisket should be used.

Dashi is a soup base made from dried kelp and katsuobushi (bonito flakes). But these days you can just buy granulated instant from most Japanese or Asian stores. The picture on the right is the dashi I normally use for my recipes.

This recipe is for 4 persons.

Ingredients:

• 4 cups steamed Japanese rice
  
• 1 pound thinly sliced beef
  
• 1 onion
  
• 1 1/3 cup dashi soup
• 5 tbsps soy sauce
• 3 tbsps mirin
• 2 tbsps sugar
• 1 tsp sake
  

Preparation:
Cook Japanese rice. Slice onion thinly. Cut beef into bite-sized pieces. Put dashi, soysauce, sugar, mirin, and sake in a pan. Add onion slices in the pot and simmer for a few minutes. Add beef in the pan and simmer for a few minutes. Serve hot steamed rice in a deep rice bowl. Put the beef topping on the top of rice.

Mincemeat Pie

These spiced-fruit delights are a classic at Christmas. Although called mincemeat, they do not contain a trace of meat in them. These classic Christmas pies’ filling only constitute of chopped dried fruit typically an assortment of currants, raisins, peel and apples buoyed with spices and a good lick of brandy or rum.

The reason that I am posting this recipe in the month of July and not during the festive season is for the remembrance of a great pastry chef and an elderly friend of mine who has passed on to be with the Lord just last week. She is the one who has taught me this recipe and many others that I will be sharing in future with this blog.

Ingredients:

Pastry

• 6 ounce plain flour
• 1 1/2 ounce butter
• 2 1/2 ounce shortening
• pinch of salt
• pinch of sugar
• 1 -2 tsp ice water
  

Filling

• 1 bottle of Mincemeat filling (Robertson's Classic Mincemeat)
• 1 granny smith apple (peeled, cored and diced)

Place the flour, butter, sugar and salt into a large clean bowl. Rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs, working as quickly as possible to prevent the dough becoming warm. Add one teaspoon ice water to the mixture and knead the dough until it bind together. Add more ice water a teaspoon at a time if the mixture is too dry. Do not over knead the dough. Wrap the dough in cling film and chill for a minimum of 15 minutes, up to 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 220 C.

Combine the mincemeat with the diced apple is a bowl.

To assemble the pie, dust a work surface lightly with a little flour and roll out two-thirds of the pastry to 3mm thick. Cut circles 7.5cm of pastry to line the cups of a standard muffin tray. Fill the pastry lined tins 2/3 full with mincemeat. Roll out the remaining pastry to the same thickness and cut smaller circles to fit as lids on the tart. Dampen the edges of the tart bases with a little cold water and press the lids on. Make a small hole in the surface of each pie with a fork to allow the steam to escape. Bake in the preheated oven for 15 mins or until golden brown. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with the icing sugar if desire.

Mincemeat pies make delicious "Petit Fours" served after dinner with a cup of coffee.

Bon appétit.

Shu Cream

Cream Puffs are called Shu Cream in Japan. I have attempted this recipe for numerous time and were rather successful each time. Control the sweetness by adjusting the amount of sugar to custard cream recipe.

Ingredients:

Puff

* 45g butter
* 2 tsp sugar
* 125ml water
* 60g flour
* 2 eggs

Custard Cream

* 2 tbsps flour (sifted)
* 1/2 cup sugar
* 1 cup milk (warmed)
* 2 egg yolks
* 1 tbsp melted butter

Preheat the oven to 190 C. Whisk the eggs in a bowl. Combine butter, sugar, and water in a pan and bring to a boil. Add flour in the mixture and stir quickly. Remove the mixture from heat and add eggs slowly in the mixture. Mix well. Put the dough in a piping bag to squeeze out as small mounds. Make 8 or 9 mounds of dough on an oven pan. Bake them in the oven for 30 minutes. Cool the puffs and make a horizontal slit on the puff.

For custard cream, mix egg yolks and sugar in a pan. Add sifted flour in the pan and mix well. Next, add warm milk in the pan gradually. Place the pan on low heat and stir the mixture constantly. When mixture thickened, stop the heat and add melted butter. Stir well and let the custard cream cool down.

Using a piping bag, fill the puffs with custard cream through the slit of the puff. Sprinkle with powdered sugar.