Italian food philosophy appeals to me; it's all about freshness and passion. Italy is a country of lovers, amore being a way of life, and this carries over into the kitchen. Italian food isn't fancy, but it is life itself. It's about using a few ingredients perfectly, re-inventing your leftovers, and putting your own spin on classics (every Italian chef thinks his way is the only way).
But lately I've been straying a bit from the motherland, venturing into new worlds of food and flavor. As I mentioned in my feasting post, I've been looking to the Middle East (even North Africa!) for inspiration. I made a pizza the other night, but it was more of a Middle Eastern flatbread, topped with feta cheese, dried apricots, and almonds. Handmade tortillas have become a staple bread around my house, and I've been slurping up rice noodles from clean, ginger-y broth.
Asia is definitely an area I've been finding inspiration in, and last night I found myself in China, making a variation of these little dumplings, or as we sometimes call them, pot stickers. This is something I've never tried making before, and actually, I don't even know that I've ever ordered them at a restaurant. Mine were definitely a spin-off of the recipe on epicurious, as I didn't have any ground pork, so my filling was primarily chopped shrimp and cabbage. But I made use of the helpful videos of chef Anita Lo making the noodle dough and filling/folding the dumplings, to better learn this new skill. As you can see from my picture, my dumplings were not quite so beautifully pleated as hers:
Though note that my last two were significantly better, so I think I was making progress!
I think part of the problem was that I wasn't using ground meat as the base for my filling, so the filling tended to move about more instead of staying in a neat little ball. But all in all, I'm pretty pleased with myself, and the finished result, served with green jasmine tea, was delicious!
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