Bonus: this forces me to sit still and do work instead of playing with Legos.

Wouldn’t be Chinese New Year without hot pot dipping sauce.

Imagine if we could get everyone to unplug their mouse and use the keyboard alone for an hour on a specific date. #RaisingAwareness

— Jennison Asuncion (@Jennison) January 18, 2012

After we got our first computer in 1993, my dad felt that I was spending too much time playing on it and resolved to prevent me from using it unsupervised. He began by taking the power cord with him to work, but I quickly discovered that any number of other power cords around the house could be subbed in. He then would lock the keyboard (anybody else remember those?), but I figured out how to pick it. Then he took the mouse. Not to be fazed, I quickly learned how to do just about everything with the keyboard, from entering “win” to playing Solitaire.

Eventually I was figured out, and he took the keyboard instead, which defeated me. It’s just about impossible to get very far with just a mouse on the computer. To this day, though, I still use the keyboard to navigate quite often. Call it a habit. There are some things that I find to be more difficult on a Mac than it was on Windows (home and end keys come to mind), but perhaps eventually I’ll adjust.

All of this reminds me that I don’t know nearly enough about accessibility on the web and that I want to learn more. One of the things I’d really like to push in for WordPress 3.4 is the pulling out of color schemes (currently just blue in core) into plugins, and then to get a high contrast theme in as a canonical plugin, maybe with an XL option/variant. To do this, I’ll need to learn about guidelines for contrast levels and consider font and click target sizes, along with what I’m sure are plenty of other things I don’t even know about. I’ve also resolved to see what I can do to learn more about screen readers and try using keyboard navigation more often in the WordPress admin. Should be good for me, especially since I’m attempting to also ease into Dvorak as of yesterday.

Note: upon trying to publish this post, I realized that I have no idea how or if I can do so with just the keyboard. Already frustrated!

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.