Thai Pearl Dumplings

I may have mentioned once or twice in the past, just how much I love Yum Cha/ Dim Sum/ Asian Dumplings.

The only problem of course, is finding ones that are InTolerant Friendly for InTolerants like me.

Apparently I'm not the only one out there who craves a good dumpling or two, as the most viewed post on my blog by far is the one on Gluten Free Chinese Dumplings.
http://intolerantchef.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/gluten-free-chinese-dumplings.html

This recipe used Glutinous Rice Flour (not related to gluten at all) and fresh Taro to make gorgeously slippery little dumplings or rice rolls that were truly just as nice as the ones I get at my favourite Dim Sum restaurant.

As it's obviously touched a culinary nerve or two, I thought I'd expand a bit on the Asian Dumpling theme a bit in the coming weeks, starting with today's offering of Thai Pearl Dumplings.

These have got to be the easiest dumpling skins around, just Pearl Tapioca Balls and water, that's it. How easy is that! An added bonus it that they are absolutely delicious, very chewy though, so be prepared for a multi textural experience with these little lovelies.

Dumpling Skins


1 cup Tapioca Pearls
1/2 boiling Water
Pinch Salt



Cover the tapioca pearls with cold water then drain immediately

Pop the pearls back in the bowl, add the salt and boiling water and stir well

Cover and put them aside while you make the filling

Really, you could stuff the dumplings with whatever filling you like. I wanted to try and replicate one of BigJ's favourites from our local Thai restaurant, that's full of sweet caramelised peanuts mixed with minced pork. Sounds strange? Well, by the time you balanced out the sugar with fish sauce and lime juice, you get that whole Sweet/Sour/Salty balance that's essential in any Thai meal.
In this case the filling needs to be quite assertive as the dumpling skin is pretty tasteless on it's own, and needs that wow factor when bitten into

Dumpling Filling

300gr ground Pork or Chicken
1/2  cup Crushed Peanuts- I dry roasted them in the fry pan for about 2 minutes first for a much stronger flavour
1/4 cup Brown Sugar
1/4 cup (ish) Fish Sauce
1/4 cup (ish) Lime Juice
1 big Tablespoon crushed Ginger
1 big Tablespoon crushed Garlic
1 big teaspoon Lemon Grass Paste
Spring Onions finely chopped




Cook off the mince meat, ginger, garlic and lemon grass until sealed

Add in the brown sugar, sauce and juice and keep stirring until it all caramelises and changes colour to a deeper brown colour. Keep an eye on it though as it could catch quickly. If you're having a hard time, add in a touch more sugar and a splash or two of water as needed

Taste the mix, and adjust the balance of flavours by adding more fish sauce/juice/sugar until it's juuuust right. Take off the heat.
Toss through the peanuts and spring onions, then set aside to cool

Now the fun part!

First things first, take off any rings- your hands will get all gunky and you'll be grateful you heeded my warning





Gather the tapioca into a ball and knead it until it comes together

Roll it into a sausage shape, then cut into twelve equal pieces- I started with 24, but changed my mind :)

Wet your hands in a bowl of cold water, then flatten the balls in the palm of your hand while making a kind of little cup to hold the filling

Place a spoonful of filling in the middle of the cup

Scrunch your hand around the filling

Pinch the edges together, smoothing it down with with a wet finger to encase the filling totally and making a nice round ball

This makes about 12 golf ball sized dumplings You could make them smaller, but it would certainly be harder to pat the dough out thin enough

Pop the little dumplings into a steamer for about 20 minutes, or until all the dough goes from white to totally translucent I sprayed the bottom of the racks with a little oil as these dumplings are very,very sticky when they're hot

They look like jelly fish on the outside, don't they?
Now I tried one of these while they were still hot, and while the flavours were nice the texture could be challenging to some people. The dough was sticky, stretchy and very gloopy- hard to chew and swallow actually. There's a reason these are traditionally served just warm or at room temperature :)






















The dough goes more opaque as it cools down

The usual way of serving these dumplings is to pop some herbs like mint or coriander and chilli onto a lettuce leaf

Wrap up into a cute little parcel, and serve with some sauce to dunk them in. This was a much nicer way of eating them, the lettuce gave a nice crunch as well as giving your teeth something to grip onto!

Nice sweet filling, a soft crunch of the nuts, chewy soft dumping then the crisp lettuce leaf all added up to a lovely lunch indeed. My family loved them, but I don't think I'd serve them to quite young children as you really do need to chew these well :)

So My Dear Readers, what's your favourite type of dumpling, and where do you go to get it?

.

Pretty Purple Carrot Cake

Happy Spring Everybody!

The sun already feels warmer, birds are singing, blossoms are blooming and tendrils of scented air waft enticingly up sinuses rapidly stuffing them with seasonally induced hayfever



Have you ever noticed how so much of taste is linked to smell?

Apparently only about 20% of your taste experience comes from the tongue, and the other 80% comes from the scent.
This was discovered by Linda Buck and Richard Axel, the winners of the Novel Prize in Medicine 2004,  for their “discoveries of odorant receptors and the organization of the olfactory system”.

They put forward a hypothesis based on the fact that if the aroma of foods is so important for the way we perceive them, then if the major volatile molecules of two foods are the same, they might taste (and smell) nice when eaten together.

This idea has been enthusiastically embraced by many of the gastronomic magicians of our time, including Heston Blumenthal, who love to perplex and amaze our tastebuds while screwing with our minds!

I love to put together fun and interesting flavour combinations, and even have this great resource book The Flavour Thesaurus- Pairings, recipes and ideas for the creative cook, by Niki Segit, to help me come up with some awesome ideas and combinations indeed.
Some odd sounding pairings from the book include: Olive and white chocolate, Goat cheese and coffee, Oyster and nutmeg and Caviar and banana. These are ones I haven't tried yet, but they do sound bizarre, don't they?


Anyway one of the taste combinations that I found intriguing was Carrot and Violet (apparently Ionone is the main pairing molecule here), and I figured it would be in keeping with my recent floral theme, and a fitting celebration of the first week of Spring here in the Southern Hemisphere.



Now of course, if you are going to play around tricking two senses, you really might as well add a third, so I decided to use Purple carrots as they are both carrots and a violent violet hue. Taste, Smell and Sight- cool, huh?

Now please don't worry if you don't have either purple carrots or violet flavouring. This recipe is just as nice with orange ones and some vanilla extract or perhaps some lemon zest instead. I don't want you to miss out just because you aren't as weirdly wired as I am.

I have a lovely lot of violets, violas and pansies blooming at the moment, and have them scattered around the house in float bowls to bring a bit of the garden in. The cat however, thinks I have left out lovely little puddles for her quaffing pleasure. How nice to have floral flavoured punch on tap!

Pretty Purple Carrot Cake

5 Eggs
1 1/2 cups Castor Sugar
2 cups grated Carrots
1 cup Almond Meal
1 cup Pistachio Meal (or you could just use more almond meal)
1/2 cup gluten free Flour
2 Tb Violet Syrup (or 2 tsp vanilla extract, or 1 lemon zest)
1 tsp gf Baking Powder
pinch of Salt



Peel your carrots, I needed 3 nice big ones for the 2 cups
Aren't these pretty? The colour is nice and solid the whole way through. Last year I grew purple climbing beans, but as soon as I cooked them they sadly turned bright green. These carrots stay a gorgeous purple even after cooking

Grate the carrots next. I chose to grate them very finely to let as much colour leach out into the cake batter as possible

I ground the pistachios just in my food processor, it was very easy and only took about a minute. The smell of the freshly ground nuts was amazing!

Separate the eggs

Whip the egg whites until nice stiff peaks form, then set aside

Beat all the ingredients together except the eggwhites, until nice lightened and a bit fluffy
My mixer is very strong so it had no problem with that, otherwise leave out the carrots until the batter is well beaten then mix through

Stir in about a third of the egg whites to lighten the batter

Then carefully fold in the rest of the whites. Don't knock the air out of them, they make the mix light and fluffy and help it rise

Pour the batter into a well greased cake pan, then bake for about an hour at 180*C

Cool in the pan for about 10 minutes, then move to a rack to cool totally before icing

Violet Glaze

My lovely violets: syrup, candied flowers and fresh from the garden

Roughly crush up the candied violets by bashing them in a mortar and pestle, or in a bag with a rolling pin

To ice the cake I made a glaze with a cup of pure icing sugar mixed with enough syrup to make a runny mix to pour over the top, then sprinkled it with crushed candied violets while it was still wet.
Do this while the cake is still on the rack so it dribbles over the edge and looks pretty. Catch any excess drips on a plate underneath. Don't forget the plate though, or it will be a sticky mess!

See the gorgeous purple flecks through the cake?

Such a lovely cake, the flavours worked together beautifully. The violet matched so very well and didn't over power the carrot-iness at all.

A perfect tribute to the taste and scent of Spring

So Dear Readers, what do you think of the purple carrots, and what is the weirdest flavour combination you've ever tried?











.

Mission Impossible

Littlej is an enthusiastic student

Actually, on her report card her science teacher used the word Boisterous- but in a good way, she did get an 'A'

One of those kiddies who love going to school, love their subjects, and love their teachers. She also loves extra-curriculars and throws herself into them entirely without thinking of the consequences when they all coincide.

This is one of those weeks

Three days this week are off classes-  One at a Peer Review training day on Sustainability, One as a full day practice for an Academic tournament (they won silver last year for all Australasia), One at a Junior United Nations (training for International Crisis Management- will it stop her arguing with her sister though?)
One evening at her self defence class (in case International Peace Keeping Talks break down perhaps)
One evening at a further rehearsal for the Tournament
All day on the Weekend at the Tournament
Plus 2 assignments due, including a hand crafted example of Medieval history- in this case making a portion of chain mail armour... link by link by link by link by link.......

littlej is confident she can handle it all in her stride
Mum is yet to be convinced

Anyway, my Mission Impossible this week is to keep her healthy, happy and well fed- not as easy as usual with so much running around and odd appointments. The answer to this dilemma was obvious: Impossible Pie

A couple of minutes to make, thrown together in one bowl with the crust forming Impossibly while it bakes. Tasty hot or cold, lunch or dinner- even breakfast (well it is eggs and bacon right) Imagine the possibilities!

Basic Pie

1/3 cup Gluten free Flour
4 Eggs
1 1/2 cup lactose free Milk
1 1/2 cup Cheese/Cheesy style substitute like soy cheese (Mini Chol available at Coles is good)
1 cup Bacon pieces
Salt and Pepper to taste
(Various Extras to taste)


One of the great things about this pie/quiche is that you can mix and match the filling to what you have on hand
I've included spinach and spring onion, but you could use a tin of salmon, grated carrot or zucchini, shredded cooked chicken or whatever happens to take your fancy at the time

Pop the flour, eggs, milk and seasonings into a bowl and give them a quick whisk until nice and smooth with no lumpy bits

Just like this one

Add in the bacon, cheese and Various Extras, then stir through

Pour into a well greased oven proof dish, just making sure the filling ingredients are well distributed so share-sies are fair-sies

Bake at 200*C for 40 mins, then check to see if the pie is nice and set without too much wobble, but give another 5 minutes if needed
Can anyone spot my deliberate mistake? I purposely left mine in for that extra 5 minutes to show you what-not-to-do. I'm nice like that :)

......Mine obviously didn't need that extra 5minutes... or the previous 5 minutes either

I blame my new Microwave/Oven/Grill thingy for the burnished top as I'm still getting used to it and am finding out I need to drop the temperature just a bit as compared to my beautiful big oven.
My microwave recently gave up on me, and I decided that  Convection combi was the way to go. There's nothing wrong with my other oven but I thought the little one would be handy if I just wanted to cook a small dish. It is- but I'm still figuring it out :)
BTW the top wasn't burnt, it's just the spinach bits that look really dark- but I caught it just in time!

Let's just ignore the top for the moment shall we, and concentrate on looking at how the flour sort of sifted down to the bottom of the pie to create a firm base. Obviously not flaky and crispy, but perfect for holding it's form and offering stability to the pie

Despite the extra time in the oven, the pie is lovely and creamy inside and was a big hit with littlej stuffing it down at 4pm for an early dinner to hold her off until she was back at 8.30pm for more. It was also handy for holding cold wedges one handed while grabbing her bags and running out the door, and nice to eat warmed up with the new oven on microwave mode for lunch

Mission Complete. Impossible?.... Not with this recipe!



Pie flipped over for photos to show you how the base looks (not to hide the burnt bits, I promise :P )

So Dear Readers, have you ever had an Impossible Week, and have you had trouble adjusting to a new appliance before?











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