Happy New Year!

Fu Dao La (which translates to welcome in happiness)! Welcome the year of the Boar. This weekend we celebrated the Chinese New Year. What better way to celebrate the New Year than with 3 Chinese exchange students. How do the Chinese celebrate the New Year or Spring Festival as they call it? Same as they and the Sung dynasty have for the past 600 years, with homemade dumplings of course!!! The reason for the dumplings is to connote their wishes for good fortune in the New Year. The shape of the Chinese dumplings is similar to ancient Chinese gold or silver ingots, they symbolize wealth.


Our student from Beijing, Javier (the one adorned with the dark blue snoopy sweater), had her two girlfriends Alice and Zinnia come over to help prepare the dumplings. These, of course, are not their traditional Chinese names but rather English (or in some cases Spanish) names that they have chosen for themselves. I personally find their names to be very sweet and flattering to their personalities. Anyway I’m getting a bit off track of the main subject here and that is DUMPLINGS. The main ingredient among our 3 teen students was naturally laughter, dancing, and music by none other then the ever popular Jay Chou. Pete of course wanted to throw a little Italian spin on things by playing the Tarantella on the accordion. Which they graciously applauded and danced to.


The family link is essential to the art of making these scrumptious little nuggets. It is really a team work. Usually family members will join the work as we all did. Even Nadia helped roll out the skins with her mini rolling pin. The Chinese start making dumplings when they are children. Good thing Emily got her lesson while she is still young. She was cranking out perfect dumplings in no time. She now holds the ancient secrets of all others who have come before her. The art itself is in making the skins which is the hardest part of making the dumplings.


How to make Chinese dumplings . . . Although the skins are comprised only of flour and water this is the difficult part. They used no measuring cups or spoons for this so it is hard to gauge how much water and how much flour to use. Hopefully my descriptions will allow you to make these at your own home. They started with a large bowl and added about 2 cups of flour. They made a well in the middle and filled it with approximately 1 cup of cold water. This mixture was then kneaded and formed into dough. Gradually adding more flour and water as needed. The consistency of the dough was not sticky and felt light and fluffy. This was then formed into a ball and set into a small bowl. Cover the bowl with cellophane or a damp towel and set aside for about an hour.


Now start the filling with chopping and mashing whatever ground meat you prefer. We used pork for ours. Then add salt, sesame oil, soy sauce, finely chopped fresh ginger and scallions. Finley chop Chinese cabbage and/or carrots and boil until soft. Mix thoroughly with the meat mixture and add two spoonfuls of water if necessary.


Flour a surface and roll out the dough into about a 1 ½” diameter log. Cut the log into about ¼” medallions. Flatten these out with the palm of your hand into a disk shape and then roll until fairly thin. Spoon a small amount of the meat mixture in the center and begin to pinch closed leaving no air pockets. Dip each dumpling on 1 side in flour so it dose not stick to the plate wile making the rest. Boil these in water until they float to the surface. Once cooked serve hot with dipping sauce. The water used to boil should be used as soup. Salt and pepper to taste. Drizzle the soup with finely chopped scallions.


For the dipping sauce . . . mix 2 parts white vinegar and 1 part soy sauce. Add in a few tsp. of sesame oil and finely chopped garlic. If you prefer a hotter variation add in some pepper oil.


The Chinese are very similar to the Italians with regard to food. They enjoy making large meals together as a family. They also make far more then enough food for all and would certainly be insulted if you didn’t go back for seconds or even thirds or fourths for that matter. This has been a truly enlightening experience for our family. We are very grateful we have such a wonderful opportunity to host such a diverse array of students from so many different countries and cultures. We are extremely blessed!