Mom Can Cook

If you think Yan Can Cook you've clearly never been fortunate enough to eat food made by my mother. People used to wonder why I never knew of any good restaurants in Chinatown.  Wonder no more: my Mom is DA BEST! Why go out? (Well, except for Peking duck or dim sum -- too much work for the home kitchen.)

Luckily, we had previously arranged for a dumpling / wonton-making lesson (Mom uses the same filling for both) for last weekend, before I started doing my Peter Brady imitation full time. Therefore, I can soothe my poor throat with wonton soup a la Mom and me (we both made them, although she outpaced me by 2 or 3 to 1, but then, I'm a novice and she's a pro).

The following food p*rn brought to you courtesy of my compulsive photography and the aforementioned lesson.  While not all of the steps are included, the prettiest ones are documented. ;-P

Blanching the napa cabbage and greens:

Minced, blanched greens, prior to squeezing out the excess liquid:

Mom uses pork shoulder meat that she has the butcher grind (she does not buy the pre-ground meat) and THEN she comes home and minces all the meat again by hand (the food processor I bought her one year sits neglected on a top shelf in her kitchen somewhere). She then squeezes out the greens (again) prior to combining it with the pork. She used to also include shiitake mushrooms but my foolish relatives (you hear that kids?!) picked them out [ !!! ] of the fillings so she doesn't include them anymore. *sob!*

Two dozen of the finished product.  Altogether, with about 4-5 pounds of pork and a giant volume of greens (pre-blanching -- much smaller post-blanching of course) we made 103 dumplimgs and 85 wontons that afternoon. These 2 dozen below were destined for dinner that night.

Mom does too appreciate the fine qualities of nonstick baking sheets, even though she doesn't bake. See? They're excellent for helping to freeze dumplings! HA! (And no, these are not all of them.)

My sweetie and I had pan fried dumplings that night for dinner. (Life is good -- I made him cook them. Heh.)  They were the 2 dozen unfrozen soldiers pictured above.

Mom also recently discovered enoki mushrooms and has been coming up with tasty combinations ever since.

So until the dumpling-wonton extravaganza, every time I visited Mom, she had some new dish in the rotation involving enoki.  This particular one had enoki, snow peas, and shredded pork.  Sometimes she swaps the pork with braised tofu.  (A little tofu -- or grapefruit -- is acceptable, according to my oncologist. Just don't go nuts.)  In either case, veggie or carnivorous, the end result was yummmmmmy....

And now, despite my 4 hour midday nap, I feel it is time for beddy-bye for Squirrelette The Sick again.  Tomorrow, I am slotted in to see my regular GP so that my throat can get checked out.

G'night!