Ingredients

• 4 or 5 pounds of ground pork (you can use other meats, but they have differing textures)
• A small-medium head of napa cabbage
• A bunch of scallions, thinly sliced
• A bunch of Chinese garlic chives, minced, or if you can’t find them, garlic paste made with coarse salt (about a tablespoon, more if you really want)
• An inch and a half chunk of ginger, grated
• 3-4 eggs (I use about one per pound to pound and a half of meat)
• Soy sauce

Making

Begin by separating the leaves of the napa cabbage and rinsing thoroughly. Roughly chop and place into a large colander, salting very liberally along the way. Let sit for at least 30 minutes, but a couple of hours never hurt. The salt will draw out the water and wilt the cabbage. Once it’s wilted, rinse thoroughly and squeeze the water out using your preferred method – mine is my potato ricer. Twisting in cheesecloth also works. Roughly chop/mince further, using a food processor if you have one. If the cabbage is still very wet, go ahead and squeeze out more water after mincing. The more water you get out, the better.

While you’re doing all of the water extraction, take the ground pork out of the fridge to let it warm up a little bit, or else you will be very unhappy while mixing the ingredients together. To make the garlic paste if needed, use the back of a knife or, even better, a mortar and pestle to smash garlic up with kosher salt until it becomes a paste. When grating the ginger, keep both the pulp and juice, discarding any stringy bits. Dump everything into a big bowl and mix gently but thoroughly with your hands. You can use a spatula if you really want, but I find it to be difficult. Add soy sauce to taste.

Before filling any dumplings, be sure to taste. Take about a teaspoonful and put it on a plate and microwave for about 30 seconds, or pan fry. It will sizzle and smoke a bit in the microwave – don’t worry, just keep an eye on it. If it’s crumbly or falls apart, add another egg. If it’s not salty enough, add more soy sauce. A good filling will be tasty on its own without the need for dipping sauce.

Serving

If you’ve made wontons, they are delicious boiled and then eaten as-is or in soup. I usually make cheater’s soup with Better than Bouillon, a little white pepper, and more sliced scallion (I also have a baggie of them pre-sliced in the freezer). If you want to bulk it up, add some bean thread noodles.

Dumplings are especially delicious when pan fried. Pour a little oil into a cold pan and set over high heat, or medium-high if it’s cast iron. Before the pan gets hot, arrange the dumplings in a single layer slightly separated and pour in enough water to come about halfway up the sides. Cover the pan and let it boil away merrily until the water is gone and the bottoms are browned. If the wrappers had a lot of flour on the outside, they may stick a bit.

Dipping sauce is also infinitely variable, but I keep mine simple with ingredients I always have on hand: 2-3 parts soy sauce, 1 part rice vinegar (balance them depending on your own preferences – I’m not a huge vinegar fan), a sprinkling of sugar, some minced garlic (if you use the pre-minced stuff like I often do, the liquid in the jar is perfect), and a dash or more of chili oil if you like spicy. Mix/whisk it all together, though it’ll separate if it sits.

Bonus

If you have a bunch of leftover filling, you can make Chinese bao zi (buns) with the same filling. I’d add some more soy sauce and maybe a dash of oyster sauce, and then wrap up in a circle of dough and steam each on a wax paper square. You can look for dough recipes if you’re industrious, or do what Chinese-Americans tend to do: buy canned biscuit dough and roll each one out before wrapping some meat inside. They steam up quite deliciously. You can also buy sweet red bean paste (sweet, NOT fermented) and make sweet bao zi.

If you have leftover wrappers, toast them and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar, using a little egg wash or maybe butter to make it stick. Also delicious.

More bonus

Videos on how to wrap them! I use water as the glue, but I guess egg whites would work too.

Thoughts:

• The promised crispy skin exceeded all expectations.
• The five spice + ginger + garlic butter under the skin was genius. Brining for at least a couple of hours also highly recommended.
• Splattering fat made a mess of the oven.
• A cooling rack set over a 13×9 pan works just fine in lieu of a proper broiler pan and top.
• Cooking the peas under the chicken in a second oven visit was a little bit of a hassle but very smart and delicious.
• Cheap. Like, stupid cheap even though we only buy natural/organic chicken. Chicken thighs are awesome.
• I need new knives that are actually sharp enough to score skin. That part was unnecessarily difficult.

Bonus: a REALLY good 8% ABV saison (farmhouse ale) out of Kansas City – Boulevard Tank 7. Complemented the food perfectly, as would any citrusy-peppery beer; Sam Adams Summer Ale comes to mind as something more widely available, although it’s the wrong time of year for it.

Thoughts so far (after two meals):

• It’s really nice to be making one-off meals, so if we hate it we don’t have piles of leftovers to deal with. We also really enjoy the variety and keeping the grocery bill low.
• The recipes seem to make a pretty hefty amount for two. We don’t eat very much at once most of the time, so the meals feel large.
• This is not meant to be simple, quick, or even necessarily healthy cooking. Nothing looks particularly unhealthy and being experienced and organized in the kitchen helps a lot.
• The usual ATK/Cook’s Illustrated precision and science apply, so some procedures will sound overwrought but make a huge difference. Read the editorial AND recipe ahead of time, always always always.

I’ve been promising myself I’d write up the process of making this three-tier wedding cake for Vivian and Julian’s upstate NY half-wedding, so even though it’s been well over a year now, it should still be worth documenting.

The process:

1. Find a pretty design and a delicious cake recipe.
2. Make two colors of royal icing: mauve and a deeper purple.
3. Pipe hundreds of tiny little mauve flowers with purple centers in a couple different sizes over a couple of afternoons while watching trashy television. Let dry.
4. Buy foamboard and custom-cut plywood for cakeboards (the plywood gets glued to foamboard for the bottom one). Carefully wrap in foil.
5. Bake seven cakes. Weep in frustration when an entire 12 inch layer cracks and crumbles (hence seven and not six).
6. Wrap cakes and let sit overnight to firm up.
7. Start chocolate ganache for top tier’s frosting, which also has to sit overnight.
8. Level cakes (4 layers per tier) and brush with simple syrup.
9. Start whipping ganache and weep again when it breaks for no good reason. Start over with a simple chocolate frosting.
10. Make an ungodly amount of simple vanilla buttercream frosting. Ditch the idea of tinting it ivory due to the sheer volume. Remind yourself to buy a covered bucket for next time.
11. Fill each tier – dulce de leche for the bottom, strawberry jam for the middle, and chocolate for the top.
12. Carefully construct each tier on its base and crumb-coat.
13. Put each tier into a box and transport all materials to car. Drive car 2 hours to the wedding.
14. Unload everything at the house and put an apron on over the pretty dress you’re wearing because you’re also giving a best-friend speech.
15. Cut straws to size and insert as supports (I like them way better than dowels – easier to cut, less wasted cake, and just as sturdy).
16. Stack cakes, lightly icing each one. Slide parchment paper strips under the edges of the bottom tier to keep the board clean. Don’t bother with a center support.
17. Really ice the whole thing and make it all pretty and swirled. Sigh because the heat and humidity are making the icing slump and not hold stiff peaks. Get over it because it’s dusk anyway.
18. Arrange flowers all over the place. Allow your husband to attach some flowers and roll your eyes slash giggle when he makes straight lines instead of pretty clusters.
19. Pipe their names in extra royal icing on the board. Contemplate learning a prettier ampersand another time.
20. Go give an awesome speech.
21. Hold your breath while others carry the VERY HEAVY cake out to the table.
22. Smile shyly and say thank you hundreds of times while cutting and serving the cake (no caterers).
23. Go home and be glad you did not try to make your own wedding cake the month before.

I actually had a TON of fun doing this, but for me it’s definitely a hobby, not a career. Our kitchen was a DISASTER and I don’t even really like sweets to begin with, so I was very much caked-out by the end.

The super-awesome cake recipe I used, from a book that is 100% worth buying. The 12-inch and 4-inch tiers required slight adjustments in baking powder. The exact science of leavening can be found in some other cake book, but I cannot remember which. Either one of the Rose Levy Berenbaum ones or the also-awesome Martha Stewart Wedding Cakes book.

Yellow Butter Cake
from Baking at Home With the Culinary Institute of America

Ingredients:
3 1/2 cups cake flour
2 cups sugar
1 Tablespoon Baking Powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, diced, at room temperature
1 cup whole or low-fat milk (divided use)
4 large eggs (room temperature)
2 large egg whites (room temperature)
2 tsp. vanilla

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Coat two 8″ pans with baking spray (the kind with flour).
2. Into the bowl of your mixer, sift together flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.
3. Add butter and ½ cup of the milk.
4. Using the whisk attachment of your mixer, mix together on medium speed until smooth, about 4 minutes. Scrape down sides of bowl as needed.
5. In a separate bowl, mix together the other ½ cup of milk, eggs, egg whites and vanilla.
6. Add egg/milk mixture to flour mixture in three additions, mixing for two minutes after each addition. Scrape sides of bowl after each addition.
7. Divide the batter between prepared pans. Bake 35-40 minutes or until layers spring back when touched in the center.
8. Remove from oven and allow cakes to completely cool in their pans on wire racks. Release sides and bottoms of cakes with metal spatula or knife. Unmold and finish with filling and/or frosting.

It fits a decent (i.e. filling but not fattening) portion of food, vents for the microwave, AND is freezer-, fridge-, microwave-, and oven-safe. We’ve been bringing pasta with cheese on top for lunch and we can get it hot enough to completely melt the cheese while still being able to pick up the mug to eat. Should also be great for stews in the wintertime and even cold foods. I call that a win.

$10 at Amazon, but we found them for $9 at Wegman’s.

I not-so-secretly love children’s books and series, especially ones that describe how things were done in another time or circumstance (Swiss Family Robinson, Little House on the Prairie). I always thought it was so cool that they did things like make balloons out of pig’s bladders or burned whale blubber in lamps. Anyway, thekitchn comes through with the method for maple syrup taffy, a la Little House in the Big Woods. Think it’s loose-diet friendly?