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Hello! Welcome to my simple food blog. As the name implies, this blog is solely served as my repository on food. Desserts, home-made cooking, reviews both raves and rants, recipes, or whatever that I encounter :). Hope you enjoy your stay :) and if you feel like it or tried the recipe, do comment on it. Comments are loved ;).

Sunday, March 4, 2012

My First Gyoza

I've been making wontons... for years, but never ever try to make gyoza despite numerous times of salivating in front of TV on Gyoza shows (Japanese love their gyoza so they have gazillion ways of making it, and the idea seems to never end). I've learned from those show that making gyoza can be cheap or expensive depends on how much you'd like to splurge. The basic is the same as wonton, well, it's Japanese wonton duh :p. I still don't know how to make the skin, but so long as the supermarket sells ready-use wonton skin, I won't try to make one either :p... This time I just make the traditional gyoza filling (those that any ramen stalls have, no fancy stuff added) because I don't like to splurge so much for my first gyoza. And the result? Well they already goes smoothly inside my tummy and I'm quite satisfied with it. And the best part? They're not oily!



What you need:
1 pack Wonton/Gyoza skin (usually have about 40 slices)
350 gr minced pork
1 no small cabbage, chopped to small bites
1/2 bunch chives, sliced to very small bites. Chives' after cut edges are sharp so you may want to slice it very thinly, else it'll tear your gyoza skin (lessons from years of making wontons)
5 cloves garlic and 1 medium size ginger, peeled and chopped fine (use food processor to get very fine texture, you don't want to accidentally bite a huge piece of ginger inside your gyoza)
1 egg
1 tbsp mirin
Seasoning: salt and pepper
about 70ml chicken stock -- for cooking
Sauce:
Ginger, julienned
Soy sauce, mirin, vinegar


How to:
1. In a big bowl add in all ingredients except the skin and chicken stock. Using hand, mix them up until it's well mixed and you don't see lots of liquid on the bottom of the bowl (best if your bottom of the bowl is dry).
2. Place 1 tablespoon of the filling and seal it with water as glue. Some recipe will tell you to use egg but I find it too sticky and wet.
3. Repeat the same step, you should get about 30-40 gyozas depending on how you scoop out the filling with the spoon.
4. On a skillet (I use small one,and must have a lid), add on 2 tbsp oil, when it's hot, place about 7 (small skillet only fits about this much) gyozas and wait until the bottom slightly crispy then pour in the chicken stock and close the lid until all liquid gone and your gyoza is done!
5. Sauce is done by mixing all those ingredients together in small bowl.

Tips:
1. You can change chicken stock with just water, but it'll boring. In those shows, I've seen chicken stock, pork bone soup, milk, soya milk... basically any type of liquid exist in the cooking world used to cook the gyoza. All these will make a difference in terms of your gyoza's finishing look like. Some restaurants will have 'ears', they're usually the crispy part caused from the stock (this, I have no idea how they do it).
2. DO NOT open the lid when you cook it. The lid serve as a steamer to cook the wonton so they'll be just nice once the stock is totally vaporated, and at the same time, your gyoza butts will be crispy and slightly burned, perfection!
3. If you want to experiment with the fillings, make sure those like water chestnuts are chopped finely because hard fillings will easily tear the skin.
4. Best eat with? Beer! Sake! Ramen! That's why gyoza is a staple in any Ramen stalls around.
5. Alternative sauce, you can use Worcestershire sauce, surprisingly they go well together :)

Enjoy!

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