Cheng's Dumplings

So remember this post about my Chicken fried rice? Well after eating Cheng's dumplings that night, I really wanted to put them on the blog. He was so kind to come over and make them again with me so I could jot down the recipe and so we could enjoy them again :)

Preparation Time: 20 minutes
Cooking Time: 10-15 minutes

Ingredients:

1 lb (.5 kg) ground/minced pork*
3 chopped green onions
2 cups finely chopped cabbage
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp soy sauce
1-2 tsp salt
1/2 cup corn (optional)
1 egg
oil
dumpling skin

* I don't know about you, but we can't go to our supermarket and pick up ground pork. If your store offers that, Awesome! If not, just ask someone at the meat counter for some ground pork and they will be happy to ground some for you.

Instructions:

Mix pork, onions, cabbage, garlic powder, soy sauce, salt, corn and egg together.

Take dumpling skin, add about a 1/2 spoonful of meat to the middle. Dip you fingers in water and wet the edges of the dumpling skin. Fold in half pressing the sides together and fold to insure that the seal is tight.














This process might be a little confusing, so here is Cheng himself showing us how it's done!

There are two ways you cook these. Cheng is from Taiwan and he says they like things fried, but boiling them also works.

Method One (Frying)
Heat oil on medium in a frying pan. Add the dumplings to the pan and let them get brown (3-5 minutes). Put some water in the pan and cover for 5 minutes (or until water is evaporated). Turn the dumplings over to brown on the other side (3-5 minutes). Serve hot :)


Method Two (Boiling)
Boil water. Add dumplings to pot. Boil for 10 minutes (or until all dumpling have raised to the top). Serve on a platter (so they don't stick to each other)

.










My husband prefers his dumplings fried. I like them both ways. Boiling them does give them a smooth texture. I also like the dumplings with or without the corn. The corn does give the dumplings a sweeter taste, but I didn't notice that big of a difference. The first time we ate them, we just put soy sauce on them.

This time Cheng made a special sauce with soy sauce, sesame sauce, and minced garlic. It was really good! It had a very savory taste. I recently got some sweet chili sauce (my favorite from when we lived in Australia!) and tried it on them. Boy, was it yummy! So just experiment with whatever sauces you have at home and Enjoy!

Thanks for helping me Cheng!

Easy Sausage Rolls

I was introduced to these little things in Australia. However, they do originate from England. It's the epitome of finger food and it is considered a take-away (fast food) item. I love them... a lot! I have been craving them since we have gotten home, so of course I had to make them. I cheated and made them really simply. I also found this recipe that sounds like a good sausage mix that I will have to try someday. So you can choose your level of baking with this one :) Oh and just so you know, if you do use the other recipe, they call mince what we call ground i.e. beef mince = ground beef

Preparation Time: 15 minutes

Baking Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients: 

1 pound Sausage*

Frozen puff pastry

*I used the Jimmy Dean roll, but you can use whatever you want. I've used linked sausage before and it's even easier!

Instructions:

Thaw puff pastry (40 minutes or put it in fridge overnight).

Roll out and cut into three strips.

Arrange sausage in the puff pastry (It's easier if you arrange the sausage in the middle)

Sorry the lighting is bad in all these pictures....

Roll up.

Cut and place on baking sheet. Bake for 30 minutes at 350*F (or whatever directions your puff pastry recommends).

Serve with tomato sauce AKA Ketchup

Easy and tasty! If you want to have this for more of a meal rather than finger or party food, I would cut the puff pastry in half, arrange a bit more sausage in the middle, roll it, then cut in half again (so you would get 4 sausage rolls out of one puff pastry sheet). If you choose to eat it this way, it's more the way you would get it if you went to a cafe.