Tutorial - Zucchini Dumpling

I got the inspiration for this dumpling from the Iron Chef 2000th dish special. The amazing Hiroyuki Sakai made adorable zucchini dumplings as a part of a larger dish, and ever since I saw them I've been wanting to give my own version it a try.

It turned out pretty and yummy (which is always my goal!) so I wanted to share how I made it.

A friendly warning though: This is pretty time consuming and detailed. I definitely don't recommend trying to put one of these together in the morning before work. I suggest making it the night before and doing the final steaming in the morning.

You will need

- 1 Green zucchini
- 2 Tbsp filling (I used a mixture of rice and bison soboro. The recipe for the soboro is below)
- A big, sharp knife
- Plastic wrap
- A 6" piece of string/twine
- A vegetable steamer

First, cut a slice of zucchini about 3" long and 3/8" thick.
Slice the zucchini in strips as thin as you can. They should be opaque, but flexible. You will need 14 strips.

Cover your workspace with a piece of plastic wrap about 1 foot square. You will be cooking the zucchini in this plastic, so make sure you use a high end brand that won't leach toxins into food (I use Glad).

Select the 7 thinnest zucchini strips and place them horizontally to form a square as shown in the picture. By keeping the peel on the same side of each strip, the end result will have a subtle zigzag pattern.

The next step is to weave in the remaining 7 strips.

First slide in the first vertical strip from the left, alternating between putting it over and under the horizontal strips.

To place the next vertical strip, gently fold back every other horizontal strip and place the vertical strip on top of the remaining strips as shown. Fold the horizontal strips back to their original position and gently push the second vertical strip so that it is flush with the first.

Repeat with the remaining vertical strips until you have a woven square. The last vertical strip might look a bit messy because of differences in the lengths of the horizontal strips, but don't worry, it will look fine in the end.

Roll filling into a ball and place in the middle of the square.

Gently wrap the sides of the square around the filling. Start by picking up opposite corners of the plastic wrap and pulling them together, then do the same with the remaining two corners. The four corners of the zucchini should just barely touch at the top of the filling. If they don't quite touch, try removing some filling. If they overlap, add a little more filling.

Once all four corners are touching, gently press in the sides, trying to flatten as much possible.

Tightly twist the plastic wrap to seal the package and secure with string as shown.

Place in steamer for 7 minutes.

Remove from steamer and allow to cool enough so that you can remove the plastic wrap without burning yourself. To remove the wrap, cut off the knot and gently pull back the plastic wrap. If you pull too hard, it may displace parts of the zucchini.

Here's a picture of the underside of the dumpling after it's been cooked.

Flip it over and here is the top of this gorgeous dumpling!

The bento lunch that I used this in can be seen here.

Here is the recipe for the bison that I mixed with rice for the filling.

Recipe: Bison Soboro

Ingredients

• 1/2 lb ground bison (May substitute beef or pork)
• 2 Tbsp sake
• 2 Tbsp soy sauce
• 1 Tbsp mirin
• 1/2 tsp grated ginger

Place ground bison in a frying pan on medium heat and separate into small pieces. When pan is hot, add remaining ingredients. Cook until the bison is fully browned and most of the liquid has evaporated. Drain off any remaining liquid.

Can be used as a filling for dumplings or onigiri, or as a topping for a donburi.

Saturday Morning Cupcakes

BF kept telling me that I should learn to make cakes from scratch rather than using cake mixes if I ever want to get good at baking, and of course he's right, so this morning I made my very first batch of cupcakes from scratch. It made like three dozen. Here's a few of them in a box (I give a lot of them away because there's no way BF and I can eat that many!)

They are zucchini cupcakes (I had two that didn't make it into bentos this week so I needed to use them up) with maple cream cheese frosting. The frosting is a little sloppy because I was a bit rushed to get them done before my swimming lesson. They're definitely yummy, but they're a little heavier than using a cake mix, so I still have some learning to do.

I decorated them with some maple leaves I made from fondant. I used pale green fondant, drew veins in them and painted with diluted red food colouring to give them a textured colour. On the pink ones (I'm still figuring out how to make dark icing without a wonky taste so that's why they're not red), I sprinkled Skor bits, and on the white ones I drizzled a little fresh maple syrup that my dad brought me from a maple syrup farm a couple weeks ago.

May 19th Bento

I didn't intend for today's bento to turn out so cutesy...it just kind of happened!

I found some mini sweet potato pies in the freezer from a batch I made a few weeks ago, so I thought they would be nice in today's bento. I decorated this one with mozzarella and cheddar flowers.

The onigiris are from last week's frozen batch. The bunny is plain, the tiger was coloured with tumeric and rice vinegar, and the elephant was coloured with purple yam powder and rice vinegar. Accents are nori and ham. There's also a heart shaped onigiri made with coconut rice and a nori accent. It was nice to have so many different onigiris because it adds some different flavours to the bento.

Underneath the onigiris are slices of a stuffed pork loin. The onigiris are really short, so they need to sit on something to elevate them, and that allows me to fit even more types of food into the bento!

In the bottom left corner there is some steamed spinach with miso and ground sesame seeds. Other veggies include yellow and green zucchini, fiddleheads and broccoli space fillers (all steamed).

There wasn't much room left for fruit so we have some blueberries, strawberries and blackberries.

Yesterday I made cupcakes, and I ended up having some leftover batter, so I made a batch of mini cupcakes as well that turned out small enough for a bento box! It's a chocolate cupcake with red bean filling. The frosting is buttercream with some matcha green tea powder, and the cupcake is topped with a small ball of mochi. It was sooo decadent! I put the cupcake in a foil muffin cup in addition to the muffin cup it was baked in, so that none of the moisture from the fruit soaked into it.