I'm a 31 year old American expat living in Oslo, Norway, with my bulldog, Ada, and my husband, Johannes. My interests include interaction design, especially information architecture, philosophy of mind and ethics, cognitive psychology, sociobiology, feminism, yoga, fat acceptance, knitting, pottery, and cooking.Mercy!
I am lucky enough to be one of the few people in the western world who doesn’t have food issues. However, there do exist a couple of food items I love so much that I cannot control myself around them. One of these is lemon sorbet. The other is shanghai potsticker dumplings.
Today I made the dumplings. They are extremely labor intensive. I have to grind the pork, chop and blanch bok choy, chop and mix in about 10 other ingredients, and then let that mixture fester for four hours or overnight. Then I have to make the dough, which is a major pain in the ass. It’s just flour and water, but one recipe of dumplings calls for 32 dumpling skins. I have to divide the dough into 32 balls and roll them out, then pack and fold all 32 little dumplings together. The lucky people in the US can apparently buy pre-made dumpling skins, but such are not available here. If it weren’t for the making of the dumpling skins, I’d make these little treasures a lot more often.
After the dumplings have been folded together, they have to be fried, then steamed, then fried again, all in the same pan. It usually takes three batches of cooking to get them all made. They’re served with vinegar soy sauce. It’s just heaven.
I don’t make these dumplings for guests very often. I don’t like to share. 