Gyoza from scratch

Our gyoza

There is something very therapeutic about a repetitive task. I guess that’s why I find folding gyozas so enjoyable.

I imagine though that I wouldn’t feel quite the same way if I did it for a living like the people in a yum cha restaurant.

Come to think of it, has anyone actually seen people working in the yum cha restaurant? There’s the trolley pushers and the waiters, but there must be scores of people behind the scenes making all that food.

I really do hope they have orange skin and green hair and burst into disapproving song whenever an Aussie refuses the chicken feet.

My friend Robyn comes around on Mondays with her daughter who is the same age as J. So I’m always looking out for good pre-schooler cooking activities to keep the girls occupied. Sandra from the $120 Food Challenge posted on gyoza about a week ago, and she described making the wrappers from scratch. Sounded perfect for our girls.

I have a very special friend in Japan who taught me how to make gyoza. We made it with pork back then, but I figured that wombok and mushrooms from the mushroom kit would make a great gyoza filling.

I didn’t follow Sandra’s recipe because it called for kneading, and that sounded like too much hard work. I followed this one, which I thought didn’t require kneading. Reading it again, it actually did, but it worked fine anyway. I used this recipe for the filling. In reality, neither recipe includes snot, so our gyozas were not a faithful rendition of either.

Making gyoza wrappers

I rolled the dough into a sausage shape and sliced the wrapper dough into circles.  The girls took turns rolling them out with the rolling pin, then I evened them out a bit and cut them into circles while the girls fought over the scraps. When the fighting turned physical I realised it was an hour after their lunchtime. Oops.

Robyn finished off the wrappers, and I folded the gyoza with my friend Sarah who also visited today. We had the gyozas for dinner with some Japanese rice and steamed pak choy. A hit with even the kids!

Oh and the mushroom tally is 11 mushrooms weighing 322grams.