I’ve been making dumplings since I was three. In fact, the first time I was allowed to touch raw dough, I rolled up strips of ginger in it, watching on proudly while my mum boiled it up and served it at the family dinner table.
That’s when I fell in love with feeding people.
Over the years, this dumpling-making exercise morphed into a whole production. Often, we would have dumpling parties when my mother’s family came over. My mother was one of seven, they all had spouses, and I have twelve cousins. On average, the estimate was that we had to prepare fifteen for every male adult, ten for every female adult, twenty for each male cousin (some of them were teenagers) and ten for each female cousin to make sure everyone got fed. You do the math. It was a LOT of dumplings.
My mother would make the filling and roll countless rounds of dough, while I wrapped and crimped endless rows of dumplings, sitting proudly on floured trays.
Even though my grandpa has passed, my mum and I still keep our family's dumpling tradition alive. Source: Michelle Tchea
Until one day, a casual conversation at Chinese New Year (over dumplings, ironically enough) turned my world on its head.
“How did you come up with the dumpling recipe, Ma?”
“I didn’t, I learnt it off your (paternal) grandma.”
“Oh cool. How did she come up with it?”
“She didn’t. She got it from her sister-in-law who got it from her mother-in-law.”
I was in shock. This fantasy I’d been telling myself as the truth for the past 20 years had been shattered, and this recipe that I had felt so much ownership over was really from a woman I hadn’t even met and was only distantly related to. Was I now not allowed to share the recipe? Was it no longer my family’s recipe? How could I not have even credited the original owner?
Except, nothing is truly original anymore. Once I got over my existential crisis I realised how odd it was that I somehow continued to believe that my mother invented pork and cabbage dumplings, like a child believing in Santa well into adulthood.
Today, I have come to believe that the recipe she shared with me was indeed hers. After all, Mum is terrible at following recipes and has spent 20-odd years refining, tweaking and changing the word-of-mouth recipe that was originally told to her. I’m sure that there are many different ingredients that have made it in and out of rotation, and techniques have been introduced and improved.
The recipe I’m sharing today has gone through even more change - mostly because I’ve included actual measurements that extend beyond “a pinch of this and a splash of that”. It’s a recipe that I made the first time I ever cooked for my husband, and it’s a recipe that I’ve taught to my nephews and hopefully to my son one day.
It’s a recipe that I hope you’ll continue to refine for your family’s taste and claim as your own. I hope it brings you a lifetime of happy memories just like it’s brought me. And I hope that your children will feel the same ownership and pass it along to loved ones, even though they don’t know me.
Pork and cabbage dumplings
- 500 g pork mince
- ½ head of Chinese cabbage (wombok)
- 1 tbsp salt
- ½ cup spring onions, finely sliced
- 3 tbsp light soy sauce
- 3 tbsp Chinese rice wine
- 1 tbsp sesame seed oil
- 1 tbsp ground white pepper
- 1 kg circle dumpling wrappers (my mum made her own but I like Double Merino for the convenience)
- 2 tbsp vegetable or other neutral oil (optional)
- Julienned ginger and black vinegar, to serve
- Dice the Chinese cabbage into 1cm pieces and add to the largest bowl you have. Sprinkle the salt on the cabbage, mixing well to combine. Leave to rest for about 45 mins, until the cabbage is wrinkled and wilted.
- After the cabbage is pickled – you’ll know by washing the salt off a piece and tasting it: it should be nicely salted and still retain some crunch – fill the bowl with water and rinse off the excess salt. Drain the cabbage through a colander and squeeze out the liquid. Repeat this process three times, until all the excess salt is washed off.
- Place the squeezed cabbage into a large, clean mixing bowl. Add the pork, spring onions, soy sauce, rice wine, sesame oil and white pepper, mixing to combine. Leave to marinate for at least 30 minutes.
- To make the dumplings, add a heaped teaspoonful of the mixture in the middle of the wrappers, and wet the edges of the wrapper with a bit of water if needed. Pinch the centre closed. To the right of the pinch, make a fold in the layer of pastry closest to you, and seal it over the centre pinch. Repeat the pinching and folding actions once or twice more. Then repeat on the left. Pinch everything to ensure it’s sealed shut.
- If boiling, drop the dumplings into boiling water, and remove them when they float. If frying, heat the oil in a large non-stick frypan with a lid over medium heat. Arrange the dumplings in a single layer And fry them for 1-2 mins, or until they are just starting to brown.
- Once they start to brown, pour over hot, recently boiled water until the water comes up to ¾ the height of the dumplings. Cover, and turn the heat down to medium-low.
- Cook until the water has completely evaporated and the bottoms are golden and crispy.
- Serve with black vinegar and julienned ginger.
Note:
• These dumplings can be cooked frozen! Simply freeze in a single layer on a floured tray, and store in an airtight container. When you’re ready to cook, follow the same instructions as if you’re cooking them fresh.
