Chinese Dumplings

At the same time that I was moving to San Mateo, my grandparents were moving from their house to senior living. By downsizing they weren't able to keep some of their kitchen stuff, so I willingly took it. Since I got the wok, I also got the Sunset Wok Cookbook. It was rubberbanded together with Los Angeles Times recipes falling out of it. Surprisingly, one of those recipes was the fried rice recipe that I grew up with. This inspired me to create a whole Asian feast last week (I’ll make it again so that I can blog it).

I had leftover Chinese sausage and won ton wrappers and decided to do a little spin on the dumplings that I had made previously to use up the Chinese sausage.

The original recipe was for pork and shrimp dumplings, but I just did ground pork and minced Chinese sausages this time.

Combine all of the ingredients.

Let sit for about an hour.  Scoop a small spoonful onto the wrapper. 

Fold up and steam for 10-12 minutes.

Ants in Trees

Good Eats was one of the first shows I was really into on Food Network when I was younger. I am a nerd at heart and I love knowing random bits of trivia. I recently discovered that they still air the show at 8 am, so I began taping it because I still can’t seem to drag myself out of bed before 8:30 or 9.

The episode that I just watched was all about Chinese noodles. He made three different noodle dishes using three different types of noodles: rice, wheat, and mung bean. Now I had no idea that they made noodles out of ground mung bean. Yes, I have seen bean threads at the market before, but I guess I never really thought about it.

I decided to make “Ma Yi Shang Shu,” which strangely translates to Ants in Trees...I guess the noodles mixed with the ground pork looks like little ants climbing up trees...no idea.

I went to my local Asian market to get the noodles...the entire side of the aisle was top to bottom full of noodles...wheat...then rice...and finally found the bean section. I got the ones that closest resembled the ones he used in the show, which were the skinny, thread like ones.