Play With Your Food: Felt Asian Dumplings (Mandoo, Gyoza)

This week’s play food is felt Asian dumplings.

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As a child, I would help my mother make dumplings (mandoo). Her technique was to pinch along the edge with both layers of the dumpling together. My Japanese sister-in-law likes to fold only one side as they are sealed together. She says it helps to keep the dumpling (gyoza) lay flat when steam-frying them Japanese style. For these felt dumplings, I used Mariko’s folding technique.

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One of the tastiest way to cook dumplings is to steam-fry them, as I learned from Mariko. The resulting dumplings have a combination of textures with the softness of steaming and the crispiness of frying. It took me a bit of trial and error to master the art of steam-frying dumplings and I will post my tips in the future.

Mariko likes to make dumplings with ground pork or shrimp, along with tofu, shiitake mushrooms, scallions or Asian leeks, sake, soy sauce, sesame oil and ginger. I don’t have any measurements so here are some other dumpling recipes in the interim:

http://steamykitchen.com/5874-gyoza-recipe-japanese-pan-fried-dumplings.html

http://www.seriouseats.com/2011/04/homemade-fried-dumplings-pork-chinese-appetizers.html

http://aboxofkitchen.blogspot.com/2011/02/shrimp-gyouza-japanese-steam-fried.html

맛있게 드세요!

Play With Your Food: Ravioli

This post is a little late, but as a follow-up to the previous week’s bowtie pasta, the latest felt food is ravioli. Ravioli is another easy pasta to replicate in felt which doesn’t require much time or materials. This time I used green felt to make spinach ravioli.

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Supplies/Tools: felt, polyfil, hot glue, pinking shears, ruler, (optional: cutting mat and rotary cutter, or scissors)

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This recipe was adapted from a Whole Foods circular. The pea puree is quick, easy, and light; a nice change from the typical tomato or cream sauces used with ravioli. I topped it with pea pod sprouts from Trader Joe’s that I happened to have in the fridge. They were nice because it added a nice element visually, but also taste-wise texturally by adding a crunch. Fresh spinach ravioli from Dave’s Pasta was also used rather than frozen ones.

Foraging in the Park

It’s apple picking season.
Rather than picking apples, the other day I helped a Vietnamese friend to forage some “cherries” in a local park in Watertown. She and her mother had already picked all the ones within their reach, but she wanted me to help her to pick the higher ones. And boy was there a bounty.

They are firmer than cherries. I can’t comment on their flavor because I haven’t tasted them yet.

It was fun and free. Once we were able to reach the branches full of cherries, we were able to go crazy harvesting them as quickly as we could. The ones we harvested would have just fallen and rotted on the ground and there were still so many cherries left. My friend Thien plans on pickling them.

Does anyone know what they are? If you do, please comment. Thanks.

Play With Your Food: Bowtie Pasta (Farfalle)

Farfalle is a great pasta to make into play food because of its distinctive look that is easy to replicate.

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Tutorial to follow.

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I improvised this recipe years ago by simply replacing the powdered cheese with deli cheese slices. It’s as easy as macaroni and cheese from the box because it follows the same directions and doesn’t take much more time. I usually like to add broccoli and occasionally some grape tomatoes (if I have them on hand).

TIP: Working with Felt and Paint

Tip: When working with acrylic paint on felt, seal the felt before applying.

Here’s what I learned through trial and error when working with acrylic paint on felt.

Play with your Food – Felt Macaron (macaroon)

Earlier this week Mr. Rabbit surprised me with a trio of macarons from Paris Baguette which inspired me to make my own.

This project reuses Vitamin Water caps, paperboard from junk mail, eco-felt and batting. I would have made more, but I didn’t have enough Vitamin Water caps. Besides, the proportions were not ideal. Ideally, the height of the cap should be a touch narrower, but the plastic was too thick to cut safely.

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Play With Your Food – Launch

Ok, so I’m a bit obsessed with food – real and fake.

I’ve made some play food (knit and felt)  in the past, but this picture of a felt food market inspired me to create more with a renewed zeal.

Plus, I am happy that the nephews and niece love to play with the play food I’ve made in the past, particularly the knit strawberries and felt green beans. They are the perfect size for their little hands.

I also intend to make a play kitchen some day; there are tons of examples for inspiration.

In order to work my way towards slowly building my market goods and stocking a potential future play kitchen, I’ve decided to make and post an item a week.  Occasionally, I will include an appropriate recipe with the made item.

Notes from Germany, on bread and potatoes

In my quest to bake authentic German breads, I picked up the following baking products during a recent trip to Germany:

From left to right: whole grain rye sourdough, tart glaze, rye flour

The flour and sourdough were purchased in order to try some recipes from a book purchased on a previous Germany trip:

Sauerteig or sourdough can be found in wet or dry form at any grocery in Germany.

Tortenguss or tart glaze comes in a clear or red color. I didn’t bother putting a glaze on the last fresh fruit tart I made, but got this to have in my pantry just in case.

You might have noticed that the bag of flour is labeled “Type 1150”. Germany has different types of flour that are determined by their ash content. I have already done some reading into this and will compile my research into another post.

Easy access to fresh yeast (hefe), fresh/dry sourdough, instant tart glaze and other specialty baking ingredients is a testament to Germany’s baking culture. However, just as many Koreans rarely make their own kimchi anymore (although there is a market for kimchi refridgerators), many Germans don’t bake since they have easy access to high quality and a wide variety of breads.

 

Germany might not be known for its culinary prowess, but they do know their potatoes. So I picked up this booklet (? not quite a book and not really a magazine):

According to the European Cultivated Potato Database, Germany has 944 registered varieties. The only other country that comes even close to Germany is the Netherlands with 646.

German potatoes are labeled and sold in three different categories:
Festkochend – green tag – waxy potato = excellent for gratins, fried potato dishes
Vorwiegend Festkochend – red tag – all-purpose potato = good for frying, boiling, and good in salads
Mehlig Kochend – blue tag, floury potatoes = mash and fluffy roast potatoes

Recipes are sorted by festkochend and mehlig kochend. Also included are recipes specifically for purple potatoes, bamberger-hörnchen and other uncommon varieties. The last section is devoted to recipes for those of similar culinary qualities to potatoes, but are not related to them: sweet potatoes and topinambur or sunchokes (Jewish artichoke). I had seen sunchokes at the market before, but never knew what it was or what to do with it. I’m looking forward to trying it at some point, especially now that it’s about to be in season.

 

Resources
http://germanfood.about.com/od/potatoesandnoodles/a/potatotypes.htm
http://www.toytowngermany.com/lofi/index.php/t155573.html

Upcycled Altoids Tin: Miniature Kitchen Set

Last night I stumbled across what has to be the best and my favorite reuse of an Altoids tin:



Check out more pictures and details at: Made by Joel

Smörgåstårta – A savory sandwich cake

This weekend we were invited to a party by a Swedish friend to celebrate the completion of their kitchen renovation and house expansion. Another friend named the party SMÖRGÅS BÖRGÅS. Ok, it’s not really a word and a odd interpretation of the actual Swedish word “smörgåsbord”; the equivalent of Häagen-Dazs, another made-up word with randomly placed accents.

It was the perfect opportunity to make a smörgåstårta!