In our household, I fondly refer to the months from October to February as Celebration Season. The holidays begin with Thanksgiving in October, followed by Stephen’s birthday, then mine in November, Christmas, Lunar New Year and wrap up at the end of February with Alivia’s birthday. Lunar New Year has always been one of my favourite holidays of the year. My family immigrated to Canada from China when I was 5 years old and celebrating new year was one way I felt connected to all of my relatives back home. Every year, we called my grandmothers and I awkwardly wished them good fortune in Mandarin before getting my red pockets. Once the Internet was a thing, my family would wake up early and watch the live stream of the New Year’s Eve variety show, always hoping it landed on a non work/school day. As I grew older and my parents more settled in their Canadian careers, they were able to take the day off and we would spend the day watching TV, making dumplings and playing card games.

Since marrying Stephen, whose family is from Hong Kong, we’ve incorporated his family’s traditional dishes into our New Year’s menu as well. His mom makes trays of turnip cake and nian gao for us and his dad fills the new year candy box with candied coconut, lotus root, winter melon and more.

This year, we tried our hand at making gok jai, a deep fried dumpling, that’s a traditional Cantonese New Year dish. The dumpling is made from a glutinous rice flour wrapper and can have a sweet or savoury filling. We went the savoury route using turkey breast and shiitake mushrooms. The lean turkey was delicious with the filling seasoning and paired nicely with the heavier dumpling wrapper. Each dumpling just needs a dime sized ball of filling as the glutinous rice flour is seasoned and puffs up when fried. For a healthier option to deep frying, we also cooked a batch of dumplings in the air fryer. The wrappers didn’t puff up as much, but still delicious and a great alternative. Using the air fryer is also much safer without having to worry about hot oil. As the dumplings cook, the air inside expands and the dumpling can spring a leak leading to oil splatter, so a splatter guard is key.

For more inspiration and recipes featuring turkey, visit www.ThinkTurkey.ca

Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post in collaboration with Turkey Farmers of Canada. All ideas and opinions expressed are wholly mine.

Yum

Turkey Gok Jai

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Cook Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour

Yield: 12-14

Serving Size: 2-4

Ingredients

• Filling:
• 100g minced turkey
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/4 tsp 5 spice powder
• 1 tsp cornstarch
• 1 tbsp oyster sauce
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 1/4 tsp ground white pepper
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 clove of garlic, minced fine/grated
• 2 dried shiitake mushroom, rehydrated and finely diced
• ½ tbsp canola oil for cooking
• Pastry:
• 1/3 cup wheat starch
• 1 cup glutinous rice flour
• 1/3 cup boiling water
• 1/6 cup sugar
• 3/8 cup water

Instructions

Filling:
1. In a bowl combine water, 5 spice, cornstarch, oyster sauce, soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil,ground white pepper, and salt. Mix well making sure there are no cornstarch lumps and set aside.
2. In a wok add a 1/2 tbsp of oil and sauté minced turkey, garlic, and shiitake mushrooms until turkey is cooked through.
3. Pour previously combined wet ingredients into the wok. Bring to a boil and wait for the sauce to thicken. Set filling aside.
Pastry:
4. In a large bowl, mix the wheat starch with boiling water until it forms a dough.
5. Add in the glutinous rice flour and sugar then slowly add the room temperature water and mix until the dough comes together. The dough will be hot from the boiling water so use chopsticks to stir together until it is cool enough to touch. Once cool, continue to hand knead the dough. The dough should be soft and malleable, not crumbly, too wet or sticky.
Assembly:
6. Pinch off a golf sized ball of dough and roll into a sphere between the palms of your hands. Flatten the sphere on one palm using the ball of the thumb of the other hand to create a flat wrapper of even thickness.
7. Place a dime sized mound of filling in the middle of the wrapper (without much sauce). Fold the wrapper in half over the filling. Using your thumb, fold over and pinch the edge of the wrapper creating a scalloped pattern. Keep in mind that the dough will have no stretch (there's no gluten in rice flour), so it is important to not overfill the dumpling.
Deep Fry:
8. Fill a wok with hot oil, and heat the oil to 300°F. Add dumplings slowly and fry until golden brown, about 10-15 mins.
Air Fry:
9. To air fry the dumplings, place inside the basket in a single layer, brush with oil, and cook at 320°F for 20 minutes. Flip the dumplings, brush with oil and continue cooking for another 10-15 minutes.

Notes

Tips: If deep frying, use a splatter guard!

0.1

In North York, Dumpling King is a great Mom and Pop restaurant and the place to grab plates (plural is the preference) of hot dumplings.

Atmosphere: The restaurant is located in the cul-de-sac of Northtown Way in North York, surrounded by condos. This little turnabout is home to a number of great, cheap restaurants that offer authentic, quality food. All of the restaurants are tiny. While there is space to sit inside, at most 12 people could fit at full capacity. The owner takes your order, chats with regulars and brings out plates of delicious Chinese fare. The queue of take-out orders can get backed up, and at times, the wait for an order could be 45 minutes. Calling ahead for takeout is a must.

Service: As previously mentioned, this is a true Mom and Pop shop. While we ate, I could overhear the owner talking about how his daughter, who used to help serve at the restaurant, is now in university and how his youngest child doesn’t love helping out. With only one server, it’s a bit hectic but charming at the same time. The space is clean and the service was friendly.

Food: If you don’t read Chinese or have a knowledge of Chinese dishes, the menu can be a bit confusing, especially the hot and side dishes. For examples, Hong Shao Rou is listed simply as Braised Pork and Beef with Flavour is really Five Spice Beef Slices, a cold dish. Tofu and Onion is actually shredded tofu sheets with a peppery, soy sauce dressing. My reading in Chinese isn’t the best so before I ordered, I looked around at what other tables had ordered. There are only a handful of dishes and each has a specific ingredient so it’s easy to match dishes that looked appetizing with the menu item.

Between The Fiance and I, we ordered a plate of pan fried pork and chive dumplings, a plate of braised pork and tofu with onion to start. The seasoning of the shredded tofu was delicious, a good balance of sweet, sour, salty and spicy. It really whet your appetite and was a nice cold dish on the hot day. When the dumplings first arrived, we were concerned that the wrappers weren’t fully closed, but the filling was juicy and not dry at all. The dumpling skins were thin and crispy. You could tell they were hand rolled by the elasticity in the dough. Condiments of chili sauce, soy sauce and vinegar are spread out through the restaurant for diners to use. I also really enjoyed the plate of braised pork. The dish was on the sweet side and each fatty piece was caramelized to melt in your mouth.

This recipe is one filling variation but you can stuff the dumplings with pretty much anything. Some variations include:

• Ground beef
• Vermicelli, egg and dried shitake mushrooms
• Ground lamb
• Ground pork and parsley
• Ground pork and napa cabbage

Potstickers

2014-06-26 19:44:36

Yields 40

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Prep Time

45 min

Cook Time

15 min

Total Time

1 hr

Prep Time

45 min

Cook Time

15 min

Total Time

1 hr

Ingredients

1. 1 lb of ground pork (a fattier cut makes for a juicier filling)
2. 1/2 shrimp, peeled and deveined
3. salt and white pepper to season
4. 1 egg
5. 3 gloves of garlic minced
6. a chunk of ginger minced
7. 1 cup of minced garlic chive
8. 1 tbsp soy sauce
9. 1 tsp sesame oil
10. 1 tbsp cooking wine
11. 1 tsp salt
12. 2 cups of all purpose flour
13. 3/4 cup of water
14. French rolling pin

Instructions

1. Mince the shrimp, garlic, ginger and garlic chive. Add all of the minced ingredients along with the ground pork into a large mixing bowl. Also add in the sesame oil, egg, soy sauce, cooking wine and white pepper. Mix the filling well until all of the ingredients are evenly distributed.
2. Into a mixing bowl, add the flour and water. Stir together with a fork until the dough starts to come together. Add more water or flour as needed. The dough should have a soft consistency but not wet. Once the dough is able to form into a ball, take it out of the bowl and knead for 5 minutes until smooth.
3. Make a hole in the middle of the dough ball with your thumb and work the dough into a ring with an even thickness of about one and a half inches. The dough is ready to be cut.
4. Cut the ring into half inch discs
5. Tip: As the discs are being cut, make sure you flour them to keep them from sticking. You want to move to the next step quickly. Make sure the flour is only on one side of the discs. If both sides get floured, it's hard to close the dumplings when you're wrapping them.
6. Using your fingers, try to make each disc as round as possible and flatten with the palm of your hand.
7. Tip: If you have a helper, this step is great to be done at the same time as the discs are being cut.
8. With a French rolling pin, roll out the discs. After each roll, rotate the wrapper 90 degrees. Repeat until the wrapper is 3-4 inches in diameter.
9. Tip: Change the pressure as you roll, you want the outside of the wrapper to be thinner than the middle. The middle needs to support the filling and can't break. This is one of the main reasons I prefer hand rolled wrappers to store bought ones, the difference in thickness throughout.
10. As the wrappers are rolled out, start wrapping. At the start, don't over fill your dumpling. If you can't close the dumpling, they will open up as they're being cooked. Each dumpling should be able to hold a full tbsp of filling.
11. [Video to come of how to wrap a dumpling] In the meantime, I'll try my best to describe it. Hold the wrapper and filling in the palm of your hand, bring the side closest to you up to meet the side opposite and pinch. Now you have a semi circle with the flat side towards you. Fold in the corner at your fingers and pinch together. Start pleating the wrapper from the corner until you reach the middle. Repeat on the other side.
12. Heat up a pan on medium-high and add 1 tbsp of oil. Once the oil just begins to smoke, lay out the dumplings in a tight ring, just touching each other. Add 1/2 of cup of water and immediately cover with a lid.
13. Steam for ~5 minutes and uncover. Once all the water evaporates, the bottoms will begin to crisp up. Watch the dumplings carefully at this point because it's easy to go from crispy to burnt. Check on the bottoms and once they're nice and crisp (~2 minutes), serve immediately.
14. Optional: I like to eat my dumplings with a dipping sauce of minced garlic, Chinese vinegar, hot sauce and soy sauce.

xiaoEats | Toronto Food Blog http://xiaoeats.com/

Step by Step Photos

Assemble ingredients

Mince the shrimp, garlic and ginger

Add the chives

All the filling ingredients, to be mixed

Ring of dough, ready to be cut

Cutting the dough into discs

From dough disc, to wrapper, to dumpling

As they’re being wrapped, keep the dumplings well floured and seperate to prevent them from sticking

Fry the dumplings