Saturday, December 01, 2007

Make dumplings (Jiao Zi)

A good friend had surgery in Portland and did not want to eat. Only she wanted was some home made Chinese dumplings. Came back from WV, I hurried up and made some for her and send them to her hospital room. I was so happy seeing the satisfaction on her face while she was eating the food sh grown up with.

Here is the instruction to make them. It may be a little complicate, but you can try it. If you have any question, please leave a comment so I will answer you in a timely manner.

1) Make a dough: Use water and all purpose flour and mix them together to make a ordinary dough.


2) Clean vegetable Chive (you can get this from Sunrise Asian grocery store) and put side, let it dry of water


3) Fry some eggs: break eggs to a bowel and pan fry them like this

4) Cut the chive to small pieces like this:

5) chop the fried eggs to Small pieces:

6) put the chopped eggs and vegetables together, add salt, specie powders and sesame oil
7) Mix them all together like this. When the good smells came out, it is ready to be used.

8) Working on the dough and make it smooth and easy to work with.

9) Make the dough as a long strip and cut it as small pieces

10) Mix the small piece dough with dry flour

11) Press the small pieces dough as flat noodle

12) Use roller to make the flat noodle thinner and bigger

12) Pick up the flat noodle piece dough

13) Put the stuffy in the flat noodle

14) Close the flat noodle to make the dumplings.

15) At first, it will be like this

16) Make the dumpling shape like this

17) These what the dumplings look like

18) Boil some water and them put the dumplings in to the boiling water for 20 minutes

19) You can put the extra ones in the Frazer for future use. You can also make them as potstickers if you prefer.

20) Dumplings are boiling

21) When all the dumplings are floating, they are ready

22) Take the cooked dumplings out to a plat to be served


23) Get some vinegar to serve with the boiled dumplings


24) Serve the dumplings with garlic and vinegar, and some beer if you like. Enjoy!

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Stir Fried Green Beans

1) Get some fresh green beans from grocery store.
2) The label like this
3) Heat pan on high and use 2 table spoon cooking oil and stir fry the chopped onion, garlic and gingers with salt about 2-4 minutes.

4) Add cleaned and cut green beans to the cooking pan.

5) Add soy sauce and 5 specie powder to the cooking pan.

6) Stir fry them all together for about 10 to 15 minutes.

7) Put in a plat and serve with steamed rice and Sweet Sour Stir Fried Potato Julienne.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Sweet Sour Stir Fried Potato Julienne

1) Get couple potato, and clean them

2) peel out the skin

3) Clean them like this


4) At first cut the skinless potato as slice


5) Cut the slice potato as Julienne


6) Put the Julienne to a big bowl of cold water to wash off the starch


7) Clean some hot peppers

8) Cut the clean peppers like Julienne

9) Get some garlic

10) Clean and cut them as small peaces


11) Get a ginger, clean and cut it as small peaces and also Clean and cut some onions as small peaces

12) Drain the potato Julienne

13) Heat a fry pan at high, Add two table spoon cooking oil, Put the prepared onion, garlic and ginger in to the hot oil and stir fry them with one table spoon salt

15) When you smelled the aroma, Add the potato Julienne

16) Add two table spoon of vinegar


17) Add one table spoon of five spice powder

18) Add one table spoon of sugar


19) Stir fry them all together for 10 minutes

20) Add the hot pepper Julienne and stir them well about 2 minutes


21) The stir fried potato Julienne is ready to serve!

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

How to make Steamed Chinese Buns

A friend of mine who once tried my Chinese steam buns and asked me to write a instruction of how to make it. I am trying here. I hope the instruction I put here would help. If you have any questions, please leave me a comment and I will try my best to answer it.


The step to make the Chinese steam buns like this:

Make a yeast dough ® make the stuffing ® make flat bread dough ® put the stuffing in the flat dough ® wait for water in steamer boiling ® put the buns into steamer ® close the steamer ® keep steamer on oven at high heating 30 minutes ® turn off the oven and open the steamer, buns are ready to serve!

1) To make yeast dough

  • Using a big salver (container) which can keep at least 1.5 gallon of water. Put 2 table spoon of yeast in the container


  • Put about 500ml (or 1/8 gallon) of warm water (40 degree centigrade or as your hand can tolerate) in to the container
  • Add 3-5 cups of all purpose flour in to the container and using a fork to stir the flour in to the water until they look like porridge ( thicker or thinner are all OK), we call it the beginner dough
  • Let the container sits in someplace warm: not too cold, not too warm ( too keep the correct temperature to be able to wake the yeast up) for half hour or more
  • Once you see the porridge like beginner dough have some bubbles raise, you may put more flour (4-5 cups or more) in to the container and start to make a dough
  • The dough should be soft and the shape is easily changed by hands
  • Put the dough in a warm place like before and let it sitting there for another hour or more
  • Once the dough raises as twice as its original site, it is ready to use.



2) Use cooking spry on the steamer so it will not be sticky


3) To make the stuffing

  • Get one onion, one clove of garlic, one table spoon size of ginger and 2 jalepeno hot pepper as you desired and clean them up
  • Get all above in to food processor and chop them to small pieces and put in a plat to be used
  • Clean some vegetables (like one zucchini, couple carrots and 3 celery sticks) you like and ground them to small pieces and put aside to be used
  • Fry 4-6 eggs or one box of tofu and then chop them as small pieces if you are vegetarian
  • Ground half pound of meat as your choice if you like to eat meat

  • Mix all the grounded mean or eggs or tofu with the vegetables and the grounded onion, garlic, ginger and poppers together, add 2tsp salt, 1tsp 5 specie powders and any other flavors you like, Add ¼ cup of soy sauce as you desired to make the stuffing smells good. Mix them well, add 1tsp sesame oil in to it, and stir them again.
  • When the stuffing smells good, it is ready to be used.

4) To make the Buns

  • Cut the yeast dough as small pieces like Ping-Pong balls


. Use roller to roll the Ping-Pong ball dough to a round flat bread



Pick up the flat bread and put 1 table spoon of the stuffing in to it


Close the flat bread with stuffing from edge to center and the bun is ready

Keep going and make as many as your dough can



5) Boil half pan of water for your steamer

6) Put the buns to the steamer

7) Put the steamer on the boiling water and keep the oven on high, let it steam for 30 minutes




8) Open the steamer and take the buns out and serve!

9) Enjoy!!