As @askaroundottawa tweeted, many Ottawans were taken aback by this morning's freak blizzard. It being two weeks into April, she asked her followers, "Who ordered the snow?" She then suggested that it was perhaps mother nature proving those of us presumptive who put away our winter gear.

I want to go on record saying, "It wasn't me!" I recall specifically asking mother nature to tell her over-achiever, Jack Frost, to knock it off. And no, the unamusing weather was not a dream, restricted to some unlucky few.

Evidence from Environment Canada
Apparently, our snowy weather system is also moving south, causing farmers in the American mid-west some worry.

For those of us caught ill-prepared, I propose the following dish to shall we say "warm the cockles": chicken dumplings in chicken stock with shredded lettuce and sliced char-siu (Chinese barbecued pork).

Bowl of Chicken Dumplings
The idiom is British and means "make you feel happy." I picked it up from watching too many cooking shows from the UK. Damn BBC and Channel4 (pre-9:00 pm) for putting on such great television. Much of what's on the Food Network pales in comparison.

Anyhow, bowls of dumplings in broth happen to be what my better half serves up to her friends and family "to cure whatever ails you." This particular batch of chicken dumplings was home made, as was the stock.

Plate ready for cooking

Dumplings cooking

Cooked and ready to plate

Slicing up some barbecued pork
The recipe for the dumplings follows that of the pork variety that was posted on foodiePrints a little while ago, only the folding was a little different as we used pot sticker wrappers from Chinatown. Since it was post Christmas (hence the festive tablecloth), Jenn felt that we needed a change from turkey and sliced up some char-siu to accompany. The char-siu was store-bought, but shipped by friends from Markahm to Ottawa.

To make your own bowl of instant comfort, you can easily pickup frozen dumplings from the local mega-mart or Asian grocery store. Cook them up as instructed, usually directly from frozen. Heat up some ready-made chicken broth from a carton and plate it up...erm "bowl" it up. Garnish with chopped green onions and you may be able to put up with Jack Frost for a little while longer...

In the same vein as foodieprints' Pork Loin entry, what do you do with a whole pork leg, the common precursor to ham, when it is sold at $1.99/lb?

If you come across a roast weighing 4 kg (8-9 lb), score the skin with a Stanley knife, rub coarse or kosher salt into the scored skin, place into a roasting pan, and cook at 200 F until the internal temperature reaches 145 F. Take the roast out to rest, raise the heat of the oven to 400 F. Place the roast back to colour the crackling. Slice and serve. If you'd like an entire recipe, try this one from cookitsimply.com. Quite frankly, I find roasting a joint of pork more of a reusable technique than a recipe: season, roast, rest, and serve.

Back End after Roasting

Coat of Lovely Crackling

Probe Thermometer, stuck into the thickest part of the roast

Sliced to Serve
I took the roast out when the temperature reached 140 F and then put it back to crisp the crackling, hence the slightly pinkness after roasting.

With respect to the string, I like to tie my roasts to ensure that juices aren't forced out during cooking. Gravity tends to flatten a roast. Given that most pork leg roasts come covered with a thick layer of fat and skin, this isn't entirely necessary. The crackling unfortunately didn't work too well during this run, neither properly crisped nor rendered. I'll have to consult my copy of Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's "Pig in a Day" dvd to see where I went wrong. Perhaps I should have roasted the leg at a higher temperature. Ezinearticles.com suggests 350 F.

Now, what do you do with a whole pork leg when it is sold at an astounding, never to be seen again, $.99/lb.

If you come across a roast weighing a whopping 10.225 kg (22.54 lb) and you've no buses to help you home, I strongly suggest bringing a child's sled along. In the summer time, try a wagon. Jenn and I shouldered the enormous roast home from the Superstore at Carling and Kirkwood. There, the butchers actually tried to convince us against purchasing the roast. When asked, they told us that they had whole pork legs, but they were enormous. We didn't heed their advice. At least the cashier had a good chuckle when she saw the enormous piece of pork on the conveyor belt.

22 lb roast in a Loeb bag
As a testament to the re-usable bags from Loeb, not only did one fit the enormous roast, it didn't tear during transit.

whole pork leg on my oversize poly board

Label

So what did we do with a roast that didn't fit a conventional oven? Making dry cured country ham was out. We had neither the ingredients (a lot of salt) nor the proper dry or cool place to cure or hang the leg. Making a traditional cooked ham was out. We didn't have a pot big enough to brine or boil the piece of meat.

We decided to cut the leg up into stew meat to replenish our frozen stores. The aforementioned bus strike saw us eat our way through our freezer. What lean pieces I cut out with little connective tissue was processed into dumpling filling.

Step 1 Stand up to your adversary

Step 2 Get a closer look

Step 3 Butcher out 3 freezer bags of 2 inch cubes of stew meat

3 bags of stew meat

2 bags of soup bones

Scraps went into a small curry with finely chopped onion and curry powder.

Scrap Meat

Everything else went into the food processor and ended up in dumplings, wrapped with North American wonton wrappers. I call them North American because traditional oriental wonton wrappers are thinner. When cooked they soften and become much more delicate.

North American Wonton Wrappers

Individual Wrapper

Minced pork with finely chopped nappa cabbage, minced ginger, and thinly sliced green onions

One tsp of mixture went into each dumpling

Wrapped Dumplings

Cooked Dumplings
Dumpling-making is something that nearly all oriental teenagers are proficient with long before they leave home. Ingredients are added until it all "looks right." Wrapping is done with deft hands.

For our mass of dumpling filling, I approximate for 2 lb's of meat, we added 4 leaves of a medium sized nappa cabbage, one 3" finger of ginger, and 6 stalks of green onion. For seasoning, my better half added several shakes of garlic powder, a pinch or two of salt, and 3-4 tbsp of soy sauce.

We cooked the dumplings in boiling water on medium heat until they floated. They were removed after another minute's simmering. Unfortunately, we didn't grind the meat fine enough so the resultant dumpling filling was slightly crumbly and a little gristly. Still, they made great meals during the week.

Dumplings Straight with Greens and Dumplings in Reduced Chicken Stock

Dumplings in Soup, Garnished with Green Onions

Me, I'm looking forward to slow cooked pork stew. Yum!

Few dishes define a good tea house better than the dumplings it serves. Dumplings are an integral element of a tea house's menu. Oriental tea houses straddle the line between café and bistro, providing a relaxed atmosphere to socialize, chat, eat, and, most importantly, enjoy tea. As such, the food tea houses should not take away from the primary activity, drinking tea. Typical dishes consist of small bite-sized morsels; nothing larger than a Chinese bun. Hence, when I visit a tea house, my first order tends toward dumplings: bite-size morels of meat and/or vegetable, neatly wrapped in a flour wrapper, that can be easily picked up with a pair of chopsticks.

Regarding tea house cuisine, there are some wildly successful food blogs that are devoted to teahouse eating. Here's one that I visit often: ChaXiuBao. The blogger was recently (episode aired in September 2007) featured on an episode of No Reservations with Anthony Bordain.

Regarding NiHao, ever since it opened, I have been wanting to try its dumplings. Since the tea house only serves dumplings weekdays during lunch as a special, I never found the opportunity to try them. I make my living quite a ways away from either NiHao establishment. Happily, during a day off, I rectified the issue and sat at a table for lunch in the Wellington Village's NiHao tea house.

For $4.99, I received a plate of 10 steaming hot dumplings. My chosen condiments included red chili oil and soy sauce.

10 dumplings for $4.99
The dumplings were simply wrapped and home made. This is evident from the pronounced wrinkling of the dumplings' skins. Mass produced frozen dumplings wrinkle somewhat less.

Dumpling Filling
The filling consisted of pork and nappa. The dumplings themselves were flavorful and moist.

All-in-all, I was more impressed by the iced green-tea that I ordered with my dumplings. The tea came chilled and lightly sweetened. Moreover, the tea was made from quality tea leaves that were gently brewed. My iced tea was flavorful and refreshing. It had none of the bitter notes that come from tea leaf dust in tea bags.

Total for lunch: $7.84 after taxes, before tip.

For dumplings at home, I direct you to Ottawa's Yen Fung Ding dumpling shop or frozen dumplings that can be purchased at any of the larger Asian markets in Chinatown.

Frozen Dumplings

Particulars:
Nihao Tea House
81 Holland Avenue
(613)722-0088

In the kitchen, one act of cooking typically precipitates one act of eating and one act of cleaning. Be it entertaining guests at a dinner party or preparing a Wednesday-night dinner, some dishes provide very high return on investment. Others do not. That is, some foods are more difficult to make than others.

An entire industry of convenience foods was spawned to ensure that this investment of time and energy is minimized. An example of such foods include the myriad of frozen dinners that are now available in the frozen food aisle of the mega-mart. Another, is the dubious Canadian innovation of instant mashed potatoes. Both demonstrate that convenience comes at the sacrifice of taste and texture.

At the other end of the spectrum are Asian dumplings. There are few dishes as disproportionate in return on investment as dumplings. These little packages of filling and wrapper are indeed delightful to eat, but they require large investments of time and energy to prepare them. This is the reason Asian families get together to make dumplings. Firstly, dumpling-making is an opportunity for family members to gather around a table and spend several hours together. Secondly, the task of manufacturing dumplings is less monumental when shared.

In Ottawa, the Yen Fung Ding Dumpling Shoppe provides a compromise. The family that owns and runs the establishment determined that consumers need not sacrifice taste or texture when purchasing frozen dumplings.

As Jenn and I discovered, this dumpling house hand makes its dumplings and freezes them raw for easy cooking later. This method for individually freezing dumplings happens to be one that many oriental parents use to ensure that their university bound children have a nutritious alternative to cafeteria food.

Our first purchase from the Yen Fung Ding Dumpling Shoppe was a nice tray of shrimp siu-mai. We purchased these open-faced dumplings from one of the many freezer chests at the dumpling shop. After steaming, the resultant siu mai was far superior to frozen Chinese dumplings from the mega-mart. Firstly, the siu-mai did not taste of chemically artificial flavorings. Secondly, the filling of the siu-mai had visible chunks of white-fleshed shrimp. Thirdly, no two dumplings were identical. Mass-produced dumplings tend to be unnaturally uniform in shape. They also tend to be filled with an amalgamated mixture of salty mystery-meat that seems to have spent too much time in a grinder or industrial food processor. Best of all, the siu-mai came garnished with very finely chopped cilantro, which is a really nice touch.

At $5.99 for the tray, Yen Fung Ding's 15 siu-mai came at a hefty price. However, neither I nor my better half had to purchase shrimp or wrappers. We also didn't have to prepare the filling, find the time to sit at the dinner table to wrap the dumplings, or rig up the steamer to steam them. Still, we ended up with siu-mai that contained respectable ingredients and looked like they were made by hand. The siu-mai actually looked like siu-mai that my family used to make with square-shaped wonton wrappers. This is evident by the uneven edge on the top of the dumplings.

All in all, I think that I will start stocking my freezer with a tray or two of frozen dumplings from the Yen Fung Ding Dumpling Shoppe. The way I see it, there are times that you crave dumplings. There are times when frozen dumplings will have to do, but you shouldn't have to compromise too much for the convenience.

Particulars:
628 Somerset Street West
Ottawa, Ontario
Tel.: (613) 233-0660
Fax: (613) 233-9472

Like potstickers and other such dumplings, wontons, deep fried or otherwise, exemplify the concept of balance that is predominant in Asian cuisine. Crispy Skins... Soft and flavorful fillings... Deep fried wontons are an elegant delivery system for meat and vegetables. Where else can you get two-bite portions of a savory meat and vegetable filling, all enclosed in a wonderfully crisp wrapper?

Deep fried wontons go wonderfully with Thai sweet chili sauce. I've actually replaced ketchup in my pantry with sweet chili sauce. I hear that a lot of Aussies have done the same as well.

Incidentally, the pictures come from a dim sum lunch I made for my fellow staff members a couple years back. I recently came across the hand written recipes. I figure it's high time, I shared them. Consider this the first in a multi-course series of dim sum great eats.

Recipe follows:

More after the jump...