Summer officially starts for me when Harvest Astoria begins and a fresh batch of veggies comes pouring in! Well, technically, I have to go pick it up but it’s so great to actually have fresh veggies.
This week’s veggies include: lettuce, garlic, pac choi, kohlrabi, dandelion, fennel, and mixed greens. It’s like a mystery bag each week.
I have never liked dandelion. It’s a very bitter leaf. After much talk with friends about various bitter leaves, they all agreed that cooking them makes it tastes best.
Recently, I had made pork chive dumplings and had some dumpling skin and pork leftover. So I decided to test out this recipe based on the pork chive dumpling but substituted chive for dandelion.
Ingredients
- 1 pack of dumpling skins
- 0.5 lb ground pork
- 0.5 cup of dandelion, chopped
- 1 egg
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tbsp rice vinegar
- 1 tbsp sesame oil
- 1-2 tsp salt, I don’t put a lot because I like to dip the dumplings
- 1 tsp black pepper
- Flour, for dusting so that dumplings don’t get stuck to plate
- Oil for pan frying
Directions
1. Dust a plate with some flour.
2. Mix all ingredients well, except the oil and dumpling skins.
3. Lined the edge of one dumpling skin with water. This will act as glue
4. Spoon about half a tablespoon into each dumpling skin and fold by pinching the edge of the skin. Set aside and continue until you run out of dumpling skin or fillings.
5. Heat up a wok with some oil on medium-high heat. Add dumplings, make sure you don’t overcrowd.
6. If you are using premade skin, you will need to do this one extra step, but otherwise, you can skip this step. When the dumpling bottom is mostly cooked, add about 1 centimeter of water, cover the wok, and lower the heat. This will help cook the skin which is dried out by preservation. When the water is mostly evaporated, set the cover aside and let the dumplings cook.
7. I like to turn the dumplings around so that most of the sides are crunchy but it’s not necessary.
8. Set cooked dumplings on a sheet of paper towel, wax paper, or weekly ads. This will help drain out the excess oil before you serve.
I serve the dumplings with a concoction of soy sauce, black vinegar, and chili garlic sauce. Or you can have it as is.
