Fusion cooking

We are taking a break from baby posts for just a minute to update our faithful readers on our continuing culinary adventures here in Mesquite.  Last week as we were making up our menu Merry mentioned that she would like Chinese dumplings.  I thought she was referring to steamed dumplings (Jiaozi) and I was just a little hesitant.  The filling is an easy mix of pork, cabbage, and chives, but the wrappers are made from potato starch and ground tapioca, difficult to find even in a booming metropolis like Mesquite.  Additionally, as anyone who has had dumplings can tell you, the wrappers are paper thin and very difficult to work with.  Nonetheless, I agreed to help her make them.  Merry actually meant (I later found out) that she wanted to make potstickers, which seemed a little easier.  Turned out, no one in Mesquite sells wonton wrappers either.  So...we ended up making our own.

The dough was not difficult to make; it consists mainly of flour and egg.  The hard part is getting the dough rolled out thin enough (which we did not do).

After putting the first "potsticker" into the oil I knew we had done something wrong, it looked waayyyy to thick.  After taking it out and taking a bite I realized that we had taken our first foray into fusion cooking and had combined two of my favorite aspects of latin and chinese food to make Chinese EmpanadasTM!  The spicy pork and cabbage filling blended quite nicely with the fried dough shell. 

They were so good that we've decided to add them to our regular meals.

Next week...back to pictures of the baby.