No, not “Dear kofta, how are you?” Yes, deer meatball wontons. At least the countries I fused are neighbours this time…if you pretend for a minute that deer roam freely in India or China…What do they think they are? Lambs?
That’s not the important part. The important part is this all happened because I got nervous. I felt like I was running out of time. I was less-than-cool under pressure.
I went to Qing Hua a few weeks ago for dumplings and marveled at the wonders of lamb coriander jiaozi. Jiaozi are not to be confused with wontons. They are not cooked in soup, they have thicker wrappers made of different ingredients, and Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, Korean and Taiwanese people seem to get upset when you confuse the names of all these dumplings. I will spend my life apologizing. It is the Canadian thing to do, apologize.
Each dumpling is simply unique. So as much as I’d like to call my creations ‘jiaozi’ like I’d originally intended to make, I just can’t. For one, I used wonton wrappers. Official wonton wrappers from Wings, the company that has its brand of soy sauce in all the Canadian-Chinese restaurants in Canada, it seems. They also distribute their wonton wrappers. Probably the wonton soup I ate at one of the three Chinese restaurants in Newfoundland when I was a kid used Wings wonton wrappers. They cost almost nothing, but I didn’t know what was in them when I bought them. They look so lovely wrapped up in their gift-wrap-style paper. When will I learn to be less superficial? I should have made the dough from scratch…but all that kneading and rolling and cutting and then the wrapping? Laziness. Also very Canadian of me, unfortunately.
So I used commercial wonton wrappers. I’m such a scam.
My plan was to make ground deer and coriander wontons. Yes, deer. My bison place in Jean-Talon sells all sorts of wild game and gives very good prices on ground meat, and so I went with deer. Why not? It should be a decent replacement for the lamb in the wontons and since they weren’t going to be as good as Qing Hua’s dumplings anyway, I wasn’t overly concerned.
Then I got a little rushed. You see, I also wanted to use the ground meat to make meatballs. I have these tomatoes…San Marzano. Perfect tomato sauce tomatoes. And I have this slow cooker that makes the most incredible meatballs. But I wanted dumplings, not pasta…and I wanted flavour. Most of all, I just wanted flavour. And the recipe for lamb coriander dumplings that I got from “Beyond the Great Wall” was basically just lamb and coriander. If I was going to go to all the trouble of making dumplings, then they were going to be tasty. I had no idea if deer would be tasty enough on its own. Certainly coriander would not be enough to guarantee flavourful success. See? Nervous.
So I went my Indian cookbook…my flavour bible. There is no such thing as a bland meat recipe in Indian cooking. It simply does not exist. So thoughts brewed in my mind until I got up the courage to do what I wanted to do…
…kashmiri meatballs. Not this is not a picture of kashmiri meatballs. The meatballs are inside. Use your imagination.
Such an easy recipe. Throw together freshly ground cumin, coriander, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, and black pepper with grated ginger, cayenne, salt and my ground meat. Mix it up with your hands. It will be hard to overpower the meat with spices, so don’t be afraid to use a little more or a little less of any given spice. I skipped the yogurt that the recipe called for, but I really should have added an egg for moisture. I think when you steam them they are less dry, but I was planning to boil because it was easier. I now have a stock pot but no dumpling steamer basket. One more wonderful kitchen accessory [thank you!], but never the one I need at the time…).
Then I put a pot of water and home-made vegetable stock on to boil with a 1″ cinnamon stick, 6 cloves, 5 cardamom pods and 2 bay leaves. I was not going to under-infuse this time. That broth steeped and steeped and then I threw in the wontons. Some of them are wrapped like jaiozi because they’re much prettier that way. Twisted at the top. I know it’s wrong because that’s not what the dough is supposed to be used for, and now some Chinese grandmother will hit me over the head with the dumpling steamer basket I covet, but the wontons look…well, bloated and sloppy. They also often come apart in the broth. The upside of the wontons is that you can stuff them more, thus diluting the amount of preservative-laden wonton wrapper that you are required to put in your mouth to get enough meat. When you wrap them, hold the square wrapper like a diamond in your hand and moisten the edges of the two sides that make up the top of the diamond.
Place a teaspoon or so of filling along a line in the middle. You want to have most of it sit in the middle of the wrapper but spread it almost all the way to the corners so there’s no wasted space in the wonton when you close it up. To seal it, squeeze the edges together tightly.
For jaiozi, moisten all four edges, bring the edge closest to you up to meet the edge furthest away like you would for the wonton, but then pull the sides in to gather all the edges at the top like a basket. If you make circular wrappers (or buy circular wrappers…) you can do all sorts of other complicated crimping wraps. Me, I’m a novice. My dumplings will probobly fall apart either way so no use putting in the extra effort.
Into the boiling broth the wonton/jaiozi went and a few minutes later, out they came. The cinnamon stick had unfurled itself and the cardamom had practically exploded in the broth so maybe, just maybe, the broth was living up to its potential. Since I really wanted dumplings, not wontons I drained the excess broth back into the pot and served the dumplings with my fabulous hot hot hot chile paste and soy sauce. I had no black vinegar, or I would have made a vinegar/soy combination. If Indians had known about soy sauce, how their food would have changed! It over-powers everything! The soy and the hot sauce could have made simple lamb and coriander into a world of flavour explosions. I’m still glad I used the Indian spices, though, for two reasons. 1) The spices have medicinal properties, like cinnamon is good for digestion. A good thing when cooking deer…I bet your stomach’s not quite used to that one…2) The smell of freshly ground coriander, cumin, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves is intoxicating. The way to a woman’s heart is through her sense of smell. Seduce me with spices.
The only other ‘wrong’ (un-traditional) thing I did was serve the meal with leftover sunchoke saag and some naan bread. The saag fit with the kashmiri meatballs part of the meal, and the sunchoke…it just went along for the ride. I really can’t rationalize that one. More importantly, I couldn’t rationalize eating a full meal of dumplings. A bit too much like a North American meat and potatoes meal. The spinach was a welcome addition. Sweet and light.
All in all, this was far from the disaster I pretty much expected it to be. I even have tons of broth left over and the juices from the deer wontons that exploded (thanks to my poor wrapping skills) have made it much richer. With the leftover broth I will do what I’m supposed to do with Chinese broth (ignore the fact that it’s Indian, not Chinese) – make fresh noodles and throw them in. I will stick EXACTLY to the noodle recipe. Well maybe I’ll use the pasta maker to knead…it’s just that I’m such a bad knead-er…why don’t I learn from my mistakes?
As much as I still think I was meant to be Asian, I do not think I was meant to wrap dumplings. Maybe I was meant to fling Kazakh noodles? We shall see…
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