historical fiction

The Joy Luck Club + Pork Dumplings

September 15, 2016 by Megan 5 Comments

Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club is about four Chinese-American mothers who immigrated from China to San Francisco and their daughters. Like a mahjong game, the novel’s sixteen chapters are organized into four parts, each with four sections. Two sections focus on the Joy Luck mothers and two sections focus on their daughters, with one chapter devoted to their childhoods and one chapter devoted to their lives as adult women.

The story Tan tells is at once distinctive and familiar. While I couldn’t directly relate to what they faced as immigrants in a foreign country or more specifically as Chinese-Americans, I easily related to the growing pains they experienced through childhood, their struggles within relationships as they matured, and the ongoing, ever-changing connection between mothers and daughters.

Every week the women of the Joy Luck Club meet to play mahjong (one woman for each corner of the game table), raise money and feast. The hostess always served special foods to bring good fortune - “dumplings shaped like silver money ingots, long rice noodles for long life, boiled peanuts for conceiving sons, and of course, many good-luck oranges for a plentiful, sweet life.” The women would play all through the night and into the morning, until the sixteen rounds of mahjong were finished, and they would feast again.

I was quite excited to be able to make dumplings to go along with this novel. I found a recipe that sounded promising (The Only Dumpling Recipe You’ll Ever Need) and got a great Asian market recommendation from my coworker. I paid a visit to 168 Asian Mart one evening and picked up all the ingredients for the dumplings + some cute little sauce dishes I couldn’t resist + some mochi for dessert.

I assembled all of my ingredients and got to work.

I wrung out each of the three thawed packages of Shepherd’s purse and chopped them as finely as I could. Then, I spent 7-ish minutes combining the greens with the pork and vinegar, wine, soy sauce and spices. Look at all that green:

I used water to wet the edges of my first dumpling skin, I plopped a generous dollop of filling onto it, and I realized I didn’t remember how to fan fold them. (Side note: I once worked as a “dumpling girl” at a restaurant folding several different kinds, each with their own unique fold. Over two extremely long weekends, I mastered all of the folds and made thousands of dumplings.) I watched some YouTube videos to jog my memory before deciding to stick with the simplest fold.

I boiled two of them to try out the filling. They passed the test, so I enlisted the help of my boyfriend and together we made about 90 before needing a break. A break meant it was time to eat! We pan-fried and then steamed them before enjoying the fruits of our labor.

They were very vegetable-y but still quite good. If I made them again, I’d probably reduce the amount of greens or increase the amount of pork until I got the ratio I prefer. Since we’ll be eating these ones for quite a while, I’m not sure when that will be!

Pork Dumplings

Servings: Yields approximately 150 dumplings
Time: 2hr 30mins
Print

From: The Woks of Life

Ingredients

3 lbs green leafy vegetable (like shepherd’s purse, baby bok choy, napa cabbage, or Chinese chives)
1½ pounds ground pork (or ground chicken or beef, as long as they aren’t too lean)
⅔ cup shaoxing wine
½ cup oil
3 tablespoons sesame oil
1 tablespoon salt
3 tablespoons soy sauce
¼ teaspoon white pepper
⅔ cup water, plus more for assembly
3-4 packages dumpling wrappers

Directions

Wash your vegetables thoroughly and blanch them in a pot of boiling water. Transfer them to an ice bath to cool. [If using frozen shepherd's purse, make sure it is fully thawed before continuing.] Ring out all the water from the vegetables and chop very finely.
In a large bowl, stir together the vegetable, meat, wine, oil, sesame oil, salt, soy sauce, white pepper, and ⅔ cup water. Mix for 6-8 minutes, until very well-combined.
To wrap the dumplings, dampen the edges of each circle with some water. Put a little less than a tablespoon of filling in the middle. Fold the circle in half and pinch the wrapper together at the top. Then make two folds on each side, until the dumpling looks like a fan. Make sure it’s completely sealed. Repeat until all the filling is gone, placing the dumplings on a baking sheet lined with parchment. Make sure the dumplings aren’t sticking together.
If you’d like to freeze them, wrap the baking sheets tightly with plastic wrap and put the pans in the freezer. Allow them to freeze overnight. You can then take the sheets out of the freezer, transfer the dumplings to Ziploc bags, and throw them back in the freezer for use later.
To cook the dumplings, boil them or pan-fry them. To boil, simple bring a large pot of water to a boil, drop the dumplings in, and cook until they float to the top and the skins are cooked through, but still slightly al dente.
To pan-fry, heat 2 tablespoons oil in a non-stick pan over medium high heat. Place the dumplings in the pan and allow to fry for 2 minutes. Pour a thin layer of water into the pan, cover, and reduce heat to medium-low. Allow dumplings to steam until the water has evaporated. Remove the cover, increase heat to medium-high and allow to fry for a few more minutes, until the bottoms of the dumplings are golden brown and crisp.

Serve with soy sauce, Chinese black vinegar, chili sauce, or other dipping sauce of your choice!

Find the dumpling skins fresh at the Asian grocery store. Look for the white, round ones. If they start to dry out, wrap them in a damp paper towel and put them in a sealed plastic bag for a couple hours to soften back up.

Freeze any unused dumpling wrappers in an airtight sealed plastic bag for later.

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The Girls + Watermelon Lemonade

September 8, 2016 by Megan Leave a Comment

Emma Cline’s The Girls turned out to be the perfect novel to close out summer. It follows 14-year-old Evie Boyd during the last summer before she leaves her home in Northern California to begin boarding school. Although heavily based on the Manson cult, it is not the charismatic leader who draws Evie in but one of the girls instead.

After wondering at the girls from afar, it seems fated when Evie’s busted bike chain leaves her stranded. The girls (and Guy) pull up in their bus and rescue her back to their ranch for the summer solstice party. The celebration is nothing like a traditional party, watermelon broken open on the picnic table while greedy children dig at it with their fingers. Evie sees past the dirt, decay and deviance. She is entranced.

Suzanne, one of the girls, is entranced as well - but with the group’s leader Russell, always attuned to his presence and ready to follow his every whim. Over the course of the summer, Evie becomes similarly obsessed with Suzanne. Though she leaves the ranch often, it’s the thought of Suzanne that keeps Evie going back, and it’s because of her that Evie pushes the boundaries of her prior life.

Dependent on donations and stolen food, meals at the ranch are meager and infrequent. As the summer lolls by, the girls reach near-starvation yet remain devoted to Russell. Any appearance of food is a cause for celebration, any remaining sense of etiquette gone until the food, too, has disappeared.

Lemonade is a drink that invokes long, lazy days - a summer classic. When you add in some watermelon, to call back to the summer solstice party and the “sticky juice” one of the girls drips all over the floor during a trip off the ranch, it makes an excellent fit for Cline’s novel.

I found Cooking Classy’s recipe for watermelon lemonade and made some this past Labor Day Weekend, a fond farewell to summer.

I cubed about a quarter of my too-large watermelon and pureed it, using my food processor in two batches. Starting out with 4 cups of puree, I ended up with about 3 cups of juice once I strained out the pulp.

I ended up using 5 lemons for the juice, with an extra leftover for garnish. I combined the water, lemon juice and sugar using a wooden spoon until the sugar was dissolved. I only needed to use the ⅔ cup recommended - it was a little tart, but it worked really well once mixed with the watermelon juice. Add some fresh mint and ice and serve on a hot day.

Print Recipe

Watermelon Lemonade

Prep Time20

Total Time20

Course: Drinks

Ingredients

6 cups cubed seedless watermelon chilled (2 lbs after removing rind)
4 cups cold water
3/4 cup fresh strained lemon juice chilled
2/3 cup granulated sugar more or less to taste
Ice and fresh mint for serving

Instructions

Add watermelon to a blender and pulse until well pureed (there should be about 4 cups). Pour through a fine mesh strainer into a bowl.
In a large pitcher whisk together water, lemon juice and sugar until sugar has dissolved. Stir in pureed watermelon. Stir in ice and mint (alternately add ice and mint directly to individual cups and pour lemonade over). Store in refrigerator.

Notes

From: Cooking Classy

If you don't have time to chill the ingredients then just use more ice in place of some of the water. Yields about 8 cups.

_______

As a bonus, here’s my puppy Beta, who enjoyed her first taste of watermelon while I made the lemonade.

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The Nightingale + Summer Vegetable Galette

August 22, 2016 by Megan Leave a Comment

Even though Kristin Hannah’s historical novel The Nightingale was one of last year’s bestsellers, I just now got around to reading it. I actually checked it out of the library a few times before but always put it down in favor of a shorter (and generally happier) selection. Thankfully, one of my book clubs - the sporadically-meeting one at work - chose it for our next meeting, so I finally had no choice but to pick it up, and I’m glad I did.

Set primarily in France during WWII, The Nightingale tells the story of two sisters, Vianne and Isabelle. Though they take different paths, both sisters do what they must to make a difference in others’ lives, even while struggling to survive their own.

As with any novel set during a war, you shouldn’t head into this expecting an “enjoyable” read because it isn’t. In fact, just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse for the sisters, they inevitably did. The Nazis’ brutality came alive on the page.

Hannah certainly didn’t spare her characters any heartache or physical pain, but she wrote with such poignancy that tender moments became that much more tender and triumphs that much more victorious. Her writing painted a vivid picture of life in German-occupied France. Her descriptions of food, in particular, helped to contrast times of bounty against times of hardship.

“Two years ago this pantry had been full to overflowing with hams smoked in ash and jars full of duck fat set beside coils of sausage. Bottles of aged champagne vinegar, tins of sardines, jars of jam. Now, they were nearly to the end of the chicory coffee. The last of the sugar was a sparkly white residue in the glass container, and the flour was more precious than gold. Thank God the garden had produced a good crop of vegetables in spite of the war refugees’ rampage.”

Throughout much of the novel, food was scarce but Le Jardin, Vianne’s residence, continued to provide. In a nod to her garden, I opted to make a French galette, or sort of rustic tart, filled with local summer vegetables. I found a recipe from Foodie Crush and made it my own.

I caramelized the onions for about an hour, but if you have the time, I’d recommend going longer. Mine weren’t quite as caramelized as I like them, but I was hungry and impatient. While they cooked down on the stove, I prepped the Michigan-grown tomatoes and zucchini, which were gorgeous.

I assembled the galettes with some pre-made trimmed pie crusts (time saver!) by brushing the edges with egg white and then coating the center with Dijon mustard. I topped each pastry with the caramelized onions, some neat rows of zucchini coins (sprinkled with thyme) and thinnish slices of tomato. A generous coating of crumbled goat cheese and some salt and pepper finished them off.

One more brush of egg white along the folded edges to add some color while baking and into the oven they went. After 25 minutes, they came out like this:

Print Recipe

Summer Vegetable Galette with Goat Cheese

Prep Time35

Cook Time1 25

Total Time2

Course: Main Course

Cuisine: French

Keyword: vegetables

Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 large yellow onion peeled, halved and sliced
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
2 refrigerated pie crusts 1 box
1 egg white beaten
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1-2 large tomatoes sliced
2 medium zucchini thinly sliced
3/4 cup crumbled goat cheese
Dried thyme
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Instructions

Preheat a large saute pan over medium heat and melt the butter and olive oil together. Add the sliced onions, season with salt and pepper. Reduce the heat to medium-low and slowly cook the onions for about 1 hour (longer if desired), stirring occasionally until the onions are soft and caramelized. Set aside to cool.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Cut one of the refrigerated pie crusts into a square (removing the rounded edges, discarding or saving for later use), roughly 7” x 9”. Place the pie crust onto a large baking sheet covered in parchment paper. Lightly brush the pie crust with the beaten egg white, inward about 1” from the edges.
Spread 1 tablespoon of Dijon mustard on the interior of each pie crust. Scatter the caramelized onions onto the mustard. Layer the zucchini slices over the onions (approximately 3-4 rows). Sprinkle dried thyme onto the zucchini. Top with the tomato slices.
Sprinkle the entire tart with goat cheese, as desired. I used about 3/4 cup of Provençal Herb goat cheese, which included basil among other seasonings. (You can use whatever goat cheese you prefer.) Season with salt and pepper.
Fold the long edges of the pie crust over and then the short edges on each galette. Brush the edges of the crust with egg white.
Bake the galettes for 20 - 25 minutes, or until the crust is golden and the vegetables are softened. Slice and serve warm or at room temperature.

Notes

Adapted from: Foodie Crush

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