Chicken and green tea dumplings

I originally had this nice little lentil and salmon salad to post, but then I decided to try out this dumpling recipe on Sunday with Rafa (staying over at mine for a few days) for his last night in Sydney before bringing him to the airport. I really enjoyed making my own dumplings and it's actually not even that difficult :) am even already thinking about what else i could put in the filling next time like maybe replace the chicken by prawns or try some veggie ones with mushrooms or so :-D

anyway, enough blabla, here's the receipe:
serves: 30, preparation time: 60min, cooking time: 15min

you need:
Dough:
- 2 tbs loose leaf green tea (i used green tea&jasmine in teabags...)
- 4 cups white plain flour, sifted
- vegetable oil for frying (once the dumplings are made)

Filling:
- 250g chicken thigh mince
- 1 spring onion, finely chopped
- 1 tbs finely chopped ginger (forgot to buy ginger, used ground ginger)
- 1 tbs finely chopped garlic
- 1 tbs light soy sauce
- 1 tbs sake (used Timirin: sweet cooking sake)
- 1 tsp rice wine vinegar
- 1/2 cup chopped coriander leaves
- 1 tbs finely chopped chives

Chilli oil:
- 1 cup vegetable oil
- 2 tbs sliced red chilli
- 1/2 spring onion, finely chopped
- 2 garlic cloves

Orange ginger vinegar:
- 1 orange, juiced, strained and reduced by half
- 1/2 cup rice wine vinegar
- 1 small knob ginger, cut into thin matchsticks (again, no ginger, but did have pickled ginger, so used that :) )

Put your apron on:
1. Preheat oven to 65°C (if you're wondering, this is for chilli oil later...)

2. For the dough, put the sifter flour in a big bowl. Bring 3 cups of water to the boil, add green tea and leave to infuse for 5 minutes. Strain tea, bring back to boil, then add 2 cups of this hot tea to the flour. Bring together to form a dough and knead for about 5-10 minutes until smooth and elastic. Wrap in cling film and set aside to rest for 30 minutes.

3. For the filling, combine chicken mince with onion, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, sake and vinegar, then add salt and pepper to taste, then mix in herbs.

4. For the chilli oil, gently heat oil in a small saucepan (that can go in the oven!), then add chilli, onions, garlic and a pinch of salt. Leave to infuse in the oven for 1 hour.

5. For the orange ginger vinegar, combine ingredients in a bowl and leave to infuse.

6. To make the dumplings, roll the dough into logs and then cut into 30g pieces. Roll pieces into 1mm thick rounds (I found our dough a bit too thick and too much, so i guess it is important to really roll it really thin and maybe use a bit less than 30g...). Place 3/4 tbs of filling in each (ok, i don't know how they calculated this, but there is way too little filling to do this! we put less than 3/4tbs in each dumpling and still we had half of the dough left over!). Crimp over the edges in a gyoza fold. You have your fresh dumplings now, off to the cooking and eating :-D

Heat little oil in a frying pan and colour the bottom of the dumplings until golden brown. When is is done, leave the dumplings in the pan and add boiling water to come up half way on the dumpling and cover with a lid on and steam for 2-3 minutes. Remove lid and cook until the water has evaporated. (I put the cooked dumplings on a plate in a low heat oven to keep them warm while cooking the others, worked fine :))


You have ready to eat dumplings! Serve with chilli oil and orange ginger vinegar. Enjoy and bon appetit! :d
*Gg*