Cabbage Dumplings

Class this week! My students requested dumplings and noodles. We're making our own noodles - pasta is easy and fun - and adding some Asian sauces. We are not making our own dumpling wrappers however. Thank goodness for decent wonton wrappers in most every well-stocked supermarket! This is a vegetarian dumpling, stuffed with cabbage and shiitakes. It's served with a simple hot-sour-spicy dipping sauce.

Using a cole slaw mix makes this a bit quicker. It's a lot cheaper to chop your own cabbage but we're trading money for time in this recipe. There are often large pieces of cabbage or carrot in the cole slaw mix. Quickly chop the cole slaw to cut down any chunks. This makes it easier to put in the wrappers later.

Leftover filling makes a good Asian "frittata." I'll be posting that super-simple recipe later this week.

Cabbage Dumplings with Hot and Sour Dipping Sauce
(makes a bunch, about 30)

14 oz. bag cole slaw mix, chopped into small bits
6 fresh shiitakes
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 scallions, minced
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
1 ½ Tablespoons soy sauce
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon Asian sesame oil

1 package (around 1 pound) round wonton wrappers
non-stick cooking spray

Hot and Sour Dipping Sauce
4 Tablespoons soy sauce
3 Tablespoons cider or rice vinegar
1 teaspoon sugar (optional)
chile oil, Siracha sauce, or chile garlic paste (optional)

Remove the stems from the shiitakes (stems are too tough to eat but you can add them to soup for flavoring). Chop caps into small bits. Mix with the cole slaw.

Heat a wok or large skillet over high heat. Add the oil. Add the garlic and scallions. Stir fry for 20 seconds. Add the cole slaw mix. Stir fry until the cabbage is no longer crunchy, stirring so that it doesn't burn. It's OK to get a little char; this brings out the sweetness in the cabbage but you don't want to incinerate it. Add the soy sauce, salt, and pepper. Stir until the soy has been absorbed by the cabbage. Remove from the heat and add the sesame oil. Stir then let it cool for 10 minutes in the fridge.

To wrap dumplings, place 1 heaping teaspoon of filling in the center of the wrapper. Carefully pick up the wrapper in your hand and hold in your palm. Using 1 finger on your other hand, smear a little bit of water along the edge of half of the wrapper. Press the edges together to seal. If you want to impress your friends, learn how to pleat the edge but that's just showing off. :-) Fill and seal all the dumplings.

Put an inch of water in a pot that fits the steamer and bring to a boil. Spray the steamer with cooking spray and place the dumplings in the steamer in a single layer and not touching (or they will stick together). Place in the pot over boiling water. Cover and steam for 8 minutes. Serve with dipping sauce.

To make the dipping sauce: combine soy sauce, vinegar, sugar, and chile oil in a small bowl and mix to dissolve the sugar. The soy and the vinegar are the base. If you like it really sour, leave out the sugar. If you like it spicy, add the chile oil/sauce.

Dumplings can be made ahead then frozen. If frozen, cook for 10 minutes.

Vegetarian Spring Rolls

I am a huge fan of rice wrappers. They are cheap. They are easy to handle once you get the hang of it. They are light and they look so cool! I used them instead of the traditional Mu Shu Pancakes last year in a class. Huge hit. I brought them back for another class this month in the form of vegetarian spring rolls. They are filled with lettuce, mint (though you could use basil if you prefer), a carrot-cucumber salad, and baked tofu. The tofu is baked in a peanut sauce which does double-duty as the dipping sauce. Delicious!

Whole lot of wrappers - you can wrap a lot of goodies with one package

There are a few tricks to using these.

• Use warm water and don't leave the wrapper in the water too long. When they start to get pliable, take them out and lay them flat for filling. I like to put the water in a pie pan or cake pan that is big enough to hold the wrapper without any bending.
• Don't overfill them. They do stretch but if you have pointy things sticking out, like stems of herbs or lettuce, they will rip. 

  

  This is about as much as you want to fill these.

• Don't stack them or let them touch once you have rolled them. They will stick to each other, ripping the wrapper.

Vegetarian Spring Rolls

(makes 12 spring rolls)

1 pound firm tofu, sliced into 8 slices (see Note)

Sauce

¾ cup creamy peanut butter

1 large clove garlic, minced

3 Tablespoons rice wine vinegar, natural or seasoned

3 Tablespoons Hoisin sauce

3 Tablespoons soy sauce

½ cup warm water, approximately

1 to 3 teaspoons Siracha sauce (adjust to your desired spice level)

juice of ½ lime

Carrot Salad

2 medium carrots

2 medium cucumbers

4 Tablespoons rice wine vinegar

2 Tablespoon sugar

½ teaspoon salt

12 rice spring roll wrappers

about 4 large lettuce leaves, washed and torn into pieces that will fit in the wrappers

24 large mint leaves

Preheat oven to 350°F. In a medium bowl, mix together peanut butter, garlic, rice wine vinegar, Hoisin sauce, soy sauce, and Siracha. Mix until smooth. In the beginning, the peanut butter will resist combining with the liquid ingredients, but keep at it. Add water to thin to a saucy consistency. You want it thin enough so you can dip but not so thin that it drips off the spoon. Place the tofu in a single layer in a baking dish (8"x4" or 9"x11"). Pour on about ⅓ the sauce and turn to coat the tofu. Bake for 20 minutes. Set aside to cool.

While the tofu is cooling, prep the carrot-cucumber salad. Peel and julienne (cut into thin strips) or shred the carrot. Peel, seed the cucumber. Cut them into 3" lengths and slice thinly the long way. (If you want more knife practice, you can julienne them too.) Combine the rice vinegar, sugar, and salt in a large bowl and mix until the sugar dissolves. Add the carrot and cucumber. Toss to coat. Let marinate for 15 minutes.

Slice the tofu into long, thin slices when cool enough to handle. Set everything out where you can reach it: all the ingredients, a pan with an inch of warm water for softening the rice wrappers, and a surface for rolling. Lay down a piece of lettuce, a couple of mint leaves, a little carrot salad, and a few tofu slices. Roll up like a burrito - fold in the sides, fold up the edge closest to you, then roll the whole thing up to the top.

Add the lime juice to the remaining sauce and stir. Serve with rolls.

Note: You can make this with tofu right out of the carton, but the texture is better if you freeze it first. Slice it into 8 pieces, put them on a cookie sheet in a single layer, and put it in the freezer. Freeze for an hour or longer. Thaw and blot dry before baking.

Corn Chowder: All-American for the 4th of July

Corn is an all-American grain, domesticated by Native Americans (those living in Mexico) and it spread from there into the Southwestern US and beyond. Americans eat a lot of it, much of it indirectly as it is primarily used for animal feed.

Just so happens that the 4th of July coincides with the start of corn season in many places (not Colorado; we need to wait until the end of July). But, there will be plenty of corn on the cob throughout the country for the 4th as it is shipped all over. I prefer the local stuff because nothing beats picked-that-day corn on the cob. For this chowder, it will be better with fresh corn but frozen corn will do just fine too. Here's a short video showing how you cut the kernels off a cob of corn. It's not difficult but you need a sharp knife. Though I don't do this in a bowl, I recommend you do. This will keep the kernels from jumping all over the place. If you do cut it in a bowl, you'll need to use a short knife, like a small chef's knife or a paring knife.

This is a simple chowder that you can make in about 30 minutes. The red bell pepper is a nice splash of color but you can leave it out. I just happened to have ½ a pepper and threw it in.

Corn Chowder
(serves 6 as an appetizer or 4 as a light entree, costs $6.30)

4 Tablespoons butter
1 medium yellow onion or ½ a sweet onion, chopped finely
3 stalks celery, chopped finely
½ a medium red bell pepper, chopped finely (optional)
2 Tablespoons flour
3 cups whole or low-fat milk
kernels from 3 ears of fresh corn or 1 10 oz. package of frozen corn, thawed
1 cup grated Cheddar cheese (about 4 ounces)
freshly grated nutmeg (optional)
about 1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper

Melt butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Sauté the onion and celery until soft but do not brown. Stir in the flour and cook for about 5 minutes. Add the milk and stir until blended. Add the corn and ½ teaspoon salt and cook for 15 minutes. The corn will still be slightly crunchy. If you like it softer, cook it longer until it gets to the texture you like. Reduce the heat to low and add the cheese. Stir until until the cheese is melted. Don't boil or the cheese will get grainy. Taste and season with a pinch of grated nutmeg, the rest of the salt, and black pepper.

From America's Best, a National Community Cookbook to Benefit the US Ski Team, 1983. It's out of print now but it's still one of my favorites.

Using Bell Peppers as a Container

No, not for cooked stuffed peppers. Use them raw as a container for tuna salad or egg salad. Peppers are sweetly crunchy. They are sturdy so they won't fall apart. Use whichever color you prefer. I like red, yellow, and orange. Core them, dumping out the seeds, and cut them into big chunks. Fill up the inside with the salad. It's a nice alternative to bread for a summer time lunch or snack.  Garnish the pieces with olive slices or drained capers. You can also serve these as a little appetizer.

It's a great way to get some more veggies into your diet!

How to Roast a Pepper

Peppers - red, green, yellow, poblano - have a lot of natural sweetness. To play up this sweetness, roast them, either in your oven or on your grill. The texture is also dramatically different - soft and silky rather than crunchy. It's an easy process and can save you a bunch of pennies. Roasted peppers are sold in jars but they are often quite expensive. They are packed in an acidic solution to preserve them. The preservative is usually citric acid, a totally natural preservative but it does change the flavor. Homemade roasted peppers are much sweeter because of this, and you can preserve them by freezing them with no loss of flavor or texture.The next time peppers are on sale, buy a few extra to stash away.

When selecting peppers to roast, look for boxy ones, without lots of wavy parts. The boxy ones will blacken up more evenly then the oddly shaped ones.

Whether you use a grill or the broiler in your oven, the process is the same:

Remove those stupid stickers and wash the peppers.

If broiling in the oven, place on a cookie sheet without a nonstick coating. The coating can't stand the extremely high temperature of the broiler. You may want to line it with aluminum foil to make cleanup easier.

Put the peppers in the oven or on the grill and leave until the skin on the broiling/grilling side is blistered and black. [Usually, you'll be able to peel the skin off easily if the skin has blistered enough to wrinkle up, even if it hasn't turned black.] Turn the peppers to get them blistered or blackened on all sides. When they are done, put in a heatproof bowl and cover the bowl with plastic.

Let them sit for about 10 minutes. The steam will loosen the skins and make them easier to peel.

Peel off the skin and remove the core and seeds. You can rinse them off  to get the last bits off but I was once berated by a famous Southwestern chef for doing this. He said it washed off the sugars. On the other hand, Rick Bayless(*) does rinse them off, so you'll be in pretty good company if you do.

Once the peppers are all clean, use them within a few days or freeze them. I recommend you freeze them as halves or whole. They are much easier to separate if you freeze them in a stack, since you probably won't be using your whole stash of peppers all at once.

Here's recipe that not only makes use of the roasted red peppers, but the beautiful summer tomatoes are now showing up in markets everywhere.

Tomatoes Stuffed with Roast Peppers, Shrimp, Capers, and Olives
(Serves 3, total cost is $8.40)

1 roasted red bell peppers, cut into 1" pieces
2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
7 ounces cooked salad shrimp (see Note)
1 Tablespoons capers
2 Tablespoons chopped black olives
Zest of ½ a lemon, grated
1 Tablespoon chopped parsley
3 large tomatoes
½ teaspoon Salt, divided
½ teaspoon Pepper, divided

Mix together roasted red pepper, oil, shrimp, capers, olives, lemon zest, parsley, ¼ teaspoon salt and ¼ teaspoon pepper.

Cut off the top of each tomato. Use a paring knife to cut up the center of the tomato, being careful not to cut through the outer wall. Remove the center and seeds with a teaspoon. Season the inside of the tomatoes with the remaining ¼ teaspoon salt and ¼ teaspoon pepper. Fill the cavities with the shrimp mixture. Arrange in a shallow baking dish and bake in a preheated oven at 350° for 25 minutes, or until the tomatoes are a little soft.

Serve with crusty bread to soak up the delicious juices.

Note: A 6-7 ounce can of tuna, drained and flaked, can be substituted for the salad shrimp

* Rick Bayless is a chef in Chicago who is well-known for his deep and broad knowledge of Mexican cuisine. He has a show on PBS (highly recommended) and many excellent cookbooks. If you want to learn how to cook real Mexican food, he is your guy.

Ham, Asparagus, and Fontina Bruschetta

We've got another Mother's Day treat for you: crunchy bread topped with chopped smokey ham, asparagus, and fontina cheese. Aside from watching carefully as the cheese melts in the broiler, this is an easy appetizer or light lunch. It is certainly an elegant combination. The first time Sharon and I had this dish was as the appetizer in a multi-course Italian dinner. Cooked by our Italian friends, this was the real deal. It's a little pricier than many of our dishes, but isn't Mom worth it? With a green salad, this would be a lovely lunch to share with her.

Ham, Asparagus, and Fontina Bruschetta
Serves 4 as appetizer, 2 for main dish
Total cost $6.00

4 oz. smoked deli ham, the best you can afford
4 oz. Fontina cheese
3-4 asparagus spears
8 slices Artisan bread (½ to 1” thick)

Finely chop the ham. You can do this in a food processor, but a knife works just as well (and gives you a chance to practice your knife skills). Grate the Fontina with a box grater, using the largest holes. Cut off the woody stems of the asparagus and cut them into 2” pieces. Steam the asparagus either with a steamer in a pot with 1” of boiling water or in the microwave by placing them in a glass dish with ¼“ of water. Cover with plastic wrap, folding over one corner, so it leaves a vent for the steam. Microwave for 3-4 minutes on high. Toast the slices of bread in a toaster. Then, place the toasted bread in an oven-proof dish or broiler pan. Carefully spoon the chopped ham onto the bread, then place 2 pieces of asparagus on top of the ham and sprinkle the cheese over that. Broil the bruschetta for about 5 minutes. The cheese and/or the bread can easily burn, so don’t walk away from the oven during this step and check it every minute or so.