All this talk of curry is making me hungry. So I thought I would throw in a good basic potsticker recipe.
The beauty of Potstickers is that you can vary the type of vegetables by your own tastes. You can also hide vegetables really well this way with fussy eaters. It's a great way to hide beets, Chard, squash, parsnips and anything else that you can easily grind up in the food processor. I've even thrown in broccoli and cauliflower!
My basic filling recipe:
Into the food processor I put...
One small yellow summer squash, cleaned and cut into chunks.
A one inch by one inch chunk of fresh ginger root, peeled, chunked up.
One stalk of celery, cleaned and chunked.
One large carrot, peeled and chunked.
Mushrooms of choice, cleaned and destemmed.
I chop all that in the food processor till it is finely chopped but not pureed.
I then dump that into a mixing bowl and add:
one pound ground meat of choice (I use turkey)
One bunch green onions/scallions diced
One cup rice flour
Two tablespoons minced garlic
Two tablespoons hoisin sauce
two-four leaves of diced or shredded Chinese or Savoy type cabbage.
I mix everything together thoroughly.
Then I use about one to two teaspoons of mixture into the center of a pre-made wrapper.
You can make your own dough, and I have done so, but it's time consuming and some nights I just don't feel like spending three hours in the kitchen.
I fold up the wrapper using a pleating method and arrange each finished potsticker into a moderately oiled frying pan. A couple tablespoons of olive oil typically is all I need.
Once the pan is full I put the pan on high heat and fry about 5 minutes or until the bottoms start to brown. Depending on your stove this could be a shorter time or longer time.
Then I take a tumbler of filtered water and dump it straight into the fry pan. Yes it's going to spit and spatter and scream at you. Cover the pan and let the potstickers now steam for about 15 minutes. The steaming time depends of course on the meat you are using. In a purely vegetarian variety I steam for about ten minutes.
When the water has mostly evaporated remove from the heat and let sit a moment. Serve with your choice of dipping sauces.
Variations:
In place of meat use one small eggplant peeled and diced up and tofu diced up - enough to equal the volume of one pound of meat. Proceed as above but adjust cooking time.
Yes this is how I get vegetables into my Husband. I use the same filling for eggrolls as well, just add extra Chinese Cabbage.
I find I always have filling left over after making up a full pan of potstickers. I simply freeze the remaining filling for use in more potstickers or in eggrolls.
For the adventurous who like spending hours in the kitchen and want to make your own dough and roll your own wrappers.
2 cups all purpose flour
I put that into the food processor and then slowly add water - roughly a half cup, adding a bit more as necessary till a dough comes together. The dough should not be overly sticky. If it is, add more flour. Dump it out onto a surface, knead it a couple minutes then cover it and let it rest about 10-15 minutes before starting. It is however adviseable that it is better to have a dough that is a bit to wet than one that is to dry.
Break off piece from the dough about the size of a ping pong ball. Roll them out flat till they are roughly 1mm-1.5mm thick. Turn the dough as you roll it so the shape becomes a fairly uniform circle. Proceed to fill as per instructions above and cook accordingly.
For pleating instructions I have found several online sites that give diagrams on various ways of folding them. I use a multi-pleat fold called "Har Gow," which is Cantonese in origin.
