I had some wonton wrappers left over from my dinner on Saturday night so decided to try another Donna Hay recipe from her Marie Claire, Flavours cookbook. These dumplings had a filling of green prawns, grated ginger, lemon juice and sesame oil. It said to chop the prawn meat finely so I decided to save time and give it all a whiz with my stick blender. The dumplings were meant to be cooked in fish stock ,which I couldn't buy at my local supermarket, so I just used vegetable stock instead. The dumplings were served with a dipping sauce of lemon juice, chilli sauce (I used sweet chilli as it was all I had) and sugar. The prawn filling was very moist even after being cooked and I really didn't enjoy these dumplings at all. I am not sure if they were like this because I processed the prawn meat instead of chopping it or if this is how they were meant to be. I wanted to like them because they sounded so nice, but I just didn't! I am glad I made the pork ones for my dinner party and not these!
Rating 4-5 out of 10.
Hi Susy,
ReplyDeleteI was taught how to make dumplings from the chinese exchange students who live at my best friends house. The fact that you processed the prawns rather than finely dicing them makes no difference other than in the texture of the dumplings.
They sell fish stock at Woolworths in the Real stock range. Should be in a small carton next to the chicken stock. I would not have substituted it for vegetable stock, but rather bought some fish sauce and put a teaspoon or two in the mixture before you start to assemble the dumplings. I would not put any stock of any kind in the boiling water because it wouldnt give a very good taste at all. Also you probably should not have used sugar in your dipping sauce when you were already using sweet chilli ;)
A good recipe for a dipping sauce is extremely finely dice some real garlic (not garlic that comes in a jar), finely slice a few stalks of spring onion, use some chilli oil and combine it all with some good quality soy sauce (if cost is a factor homebrand is ok, but a more expensive brand is obviously going to taste better). Then just dip straight in :) its sooo good :D but dont expect to have nice smelling breath afterwards because depending on how much sauce you want to make, you will need to have a 2-3 cloves of garlic per 250ml (depending on the size of the cloves).
Hope it helps :)
I would try the prawn dumplings again but with that sauce recipe and with the fish sauce ;)
Good luck :)
Thanks for the ideas Aleisha, I will give them another go some time. Susy
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