Don’t Put Too Much In!

Every so often, my wife needs dumplings.   Less often, but no less notably, she needs to make dumplings.  And when a Shandong woman needs to make dumplings you will necessarily be eating well, my friend.  And if you can’t lend a hand you had better get out of that woman’s way. 

Dumplings are delicious and eaten as served, rather filling.   Approaching a plate of jiaozi  with an Atkins residue in one’s conscience they look hopelessly fattening and so I often eat the juicy xianr and leave the pi on the plate.  This is as visually compromised to watch happen as it is to consider as aftermath and my wife tells me so.  If I were to leave such a pile in a restaurant on a plate.  But to do it with her dumplings would be courting more trouble than I need tonight. 

The veggie and the meat fillings are finely chopped and are sitting in large bowls.  The dough has been rolled out and a first few knots have been cut off to press out flat.  There are a half a dozen thin, discs of dough ready to be stuffed and sealed.  My daughters and I make our way over.  The older one is only interested in stuffing veggie jiaozi and she brings that bowl towards her side of the counter.  My younger one and I take a dough disc, and place it flat on our thumb and index finger, and with the other hand scoop out precisely the right amount of meat xianr, and spoon it on to the skin.  Now the tricky part, to artfully seal it.

“Don’t put too much in!  I don’t want a pile of disgusting dumplings on the plate that no one wants to eat.  Don’t have it dripping.”  I put a bit of stuffing back in the bowl just in case.  Now I consider the challenge and all the many Chinese New Year I’ve been taught, unsuccessfully, how to do this next move.  I can get this closed without any of the goo seeping out, definitely. If compromises are to be made it will be on the scalloped finish that knots it up sealed, but I can keep the goo in.  My first pinch closes the top and I get to work stitching the rest of the semi-circle but soon it is clear that an undeniable drop of goo has moistened the outer skin to mar the look and compromise the final product of my initial dumpling.  Before all of this transpires my wife has gone after my little one for making a mess of her first dumpling.  Having dodged a bullet but only briefly, I consider where to hide my starchy embarrassment. 

Things have gone from bad to worse over on the front lines and my younger one is now leaving the kitchen.  My wife spies my faulty effort and grows more frustrated.  I’m not in the mood to fight for the right to learn this evening.  I too volunteer to leave.  Returning to the open arms of my computer, I notice that my older one is doing rather well with her baoing effort.  No dripping.  I go to hang with the younger one and leave the other two in the kitchen to bond over the ritual. 

Sunday, 8/13/17