Chicken and Shitake Dumplings
1. Take the recipe of one pirate.
2. Adjust as required, depending on skill, intelligence, creativity, or lack thereof.
3. Attempt to purchse a dumpling maker.
4. Fail.
5. Go to the butcher and ask him to mince 250 grams of chicken. Weather his bemused gaze. Say, with as much dignity as possible, "Or, you know, roughly."
6. Accept that it is an impossible task for the butcher to mince 250 grams of chicken, and allow him to kindly slice it up into little bits for you. Say "See you again" when leaving, and try to look like you mean it.
7. Get some shitake mushrooms. Marinate in water. Use forks, if necessary, to keep the little bastards submerged.
8. Eat whatever is in the cupboard while you figure out the next bit.
9. If you own a computer and/or printer similar to the ones pictured below, curse the day you wasted your precious money on the stupid machines. They are of no use to you. You will need to walk from the study to the kitchen repeatedly for the rest of the exercise.
10. Imagine it is a good idea to add the sesame oil and light soy sauce to the wok now.
11. Burn them. Repeat step 8.
12. Make an executive decision regarding the bok choy. How much you use is up to you. Whether the green bits or the white bits are used is also your choice. Deliberate.
13. Decide it's all too hard, and chop the lot up. All except the middle bit. It looks like a baby bok choy and that would be cruel.
14. Chop up some ginger. Assuming your butcher wouldn't mince chicken either, further assume that mincing ginger will be out of the question. Deliberate on whether you are supposed to chop up the middle of the ginger, where the little hairy bits are. Decide against it.
15. Punch the garlic. There is no other way to open it.
16. Use as much as you like. Chop it like the ginger.
17. Put the chicken, bok choy, garlic and ginger in the wok.
18. Stir until cooked.
19. Remember the shitake mushrooms.
20. Remove wok from heat.
21. Chop mushrooms as finely as possible under the circumstances. Throw as much as possible into the wok. Cook. Ignore the pooling of fluid in the bottom of the wok. Taste the shitake water.
22. Attempt to separate the frozen dumpling skins. First, try a blunt knife. Then, defrost in the microwave. Neither of these methods will work.
23. Eat anything you can find. For this exercise, I used a flavoured rice cracker.
24. Eventually prise off a whole dumpling skin. Discard the earlier ones. Fill the dumpling skin with one teaspoon of chicken mixture. Pick up the pieces that fall out. Eat them.
25. Verbally abuse any children that enter the kitchen asking if they can help.
26. Fold the dumpling in half, deftly trapping the filling. Pinch the edges together.
This will not work.
27. Remind yourself that the purpose of this whole exercise was to use the dumpling maker.
28. Observe the baby bok choy wilting. Feel disconcerted.
29. Remember Granny's trick with the fork. Use it on the dumplings.
30. Repeat steps 24 and 29 until children reappear.
31. Generously offer a turn at dumpling making. Stay close. Be prepared to mock them mercilessly.
32. Watch the pile of dumplings grow.
33. Eat an easter egg.
34. Ponder what on Earth you can possibly do with the poor little bok choy.
35. Go to the bottle shop. Find the perfect bottle of wine. Notice that it's on special: $12.99 down from $19.99
36. Buy this instead. Pour a glass immediately.
37. In your absence, the dumplings will have attempted to copulate. Begin to prise them apart.
38. Fry several dumplings in hot peanut oil. Remove to a separate dish. Remember you were supposed to splash water into the pan to make them fluffy with steam. Return them to the wok. Steam them. This will make no difference to the final product. Remove them, and repeat for several batches. Come to the understanding that 'lightly fry' is open to interpretation.
39. Finish glass of wine. Burn the last batch.
40. Mix together a splash of sesame oil, white vinegar and supermarket brand soy sauce. Taste it. Try to understand the point of it.
41. Serve dumplings and sauce with a glass of wine.
42. Allow children to tip some of your wine onto their plates with the dipping sauce. Copy them. This will make a mess, but the sauce tastes better with it than without it.
8 comments:
I notice in one picture you took there was a kettle, with a glossy reflective surface, in the background. I think I'll enlarge it to see if you were cooking while nude.
Wow, it sounds like the party is moving to Santifiable... what's for dinner, Nah bugger it, any of that goon left?
best. cooking. post. ever.
If you can't get a dumpling maker (and want to) email me your address and I'll send you one.
elainethepirate@gmail
HB: Ha!... Well, it was a very hot day.
SAAK: Heaps. Meet you behind the sports shed.
Elaine: Shucks. Bless. A pirate that gives stuff away. If I can't, I definitely will. Then you can tell me what else I can fill 'em with.
See, I've got a real problem with this recipe. Like all things with more than three steps, it draws on a reserve of dedication I'll just never possess.
So unfortunately, I'm forever condemned to the beef chow mein down at Lee Hou Fuk's.
I notice scaryasakitten mentioned 'goon'.
Hazel and I were reminiscing about goon just this weekend past.
It was amazing how the first sip always tasted like Cockburn Sound bilgewater, but how every swig thereafter might have been drawn from Brandywine River and decanted from crystal elvenware.
That was h.i.l.a.r.i.o.u.s.
Thanks for the sore belly muscles!
Cheers Duck, and welcome :)
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