After a month of feast, it is time to take a break from the heavy dishes and have a plant-based diet. Try this recipe of vegan dumplings, which has tofu, carrots, zucchini and mushrooms in the filling. The dumpling skin is made of leavened dough, perfect to cook both on steam and pan-fry.
February has been a busy month. It was packed by several Cooking Classes and Private Chef events, together with many celebrations. We had started the celebration of the Chinese New Year straight from the 1st of the month. Then shortly it was the Lichun (beginning of spring) on the 4th; following there were the San Valentine’s Day, the festival of lantern, birthdays of family members, and few private events here and there. It was a month of constant cooking but little time for blogging.
Taking a pause from occupying myself in the kitchen, I feel the urge to sit down and record a recipe.
HOW THIS RECIPE WAS BORN
This recipe was developed years ago for a private event with my Private Chef project, with the great help of my aunt. A client asked me to prepare a vegan dumpling dish for her event and I found myself out of ideas. One day while chatting with my aunt over video call (she was, and still is, living in Shenyang), I mentioned my problem of not able to make a vegan dumpling tasty.
“Being vegan meant little choice of protein in the filling. And I didn’t want to use beans directly in the filling. that’s just too weird and non-authentic.”
“Em... why not the tofu! You mash the tofu and season it. The tofu acts like a sponge: absorbing the flavors and release them once cooked. You can find the vegan tofu easily these days!”
Her words were the light bulbs! I made the vegan dumplings following her suggestion and the client was happy with the result. Afterwards I improved the recipe little by little, time after time. Up to the current version written here!
Now I found my favorite way to season the tofu: using soybean paste! The reason is simply: it is full of flavor and little liquid. Perfect to prevent a plant-based filling from getting soggy.
LEAVENED DOUGH FOR THE DUMPLING SKIN
I’ve only briefly gone through the steps of the dough preparation in the recipe, since they are the same as the dough for Hua Juan and Mantou.
FOLDING THE DUMPLING IN THE SHAPE OF A LEAF
This fold is quite popular on social media. One of the guru in folding dumpling in this way is Little Fat Boy.
I got inspired by his work and made the dumpling wraps in two colors.
VEGAN DUMPLINGS IN THE SHAPE OF LEAVES 柳叶饺子
Course: First courseCuisine: ChineseDifficulty: Media4
persons1
hour40
minutes20
minutesVegan dumplings with tofu, carrots, zucchini and mushrooms in the filling. The dumpling skin is made of leavened dough, perfect to cook both on steam and pan-fry.
INGREDIENTS
- The filling
Vegan tofu: 250g
Zucchini (grated): 1
Carrot (grated): 1
Shiitake mushrooms: 4
Fermented soy bean paste: 2 tbsp
Salt: 3 tsp
Soy sauce: 2 tbsp
Oyster sauce: 1 tbsp
Chopped scallion: 1
- The Dough
All purposed flour: 200g
Dried yeast: 4g
Water: 100g (use the pumpkin purée or the juice of spinach to get different colors)
Preparation
- The filling
- Grate one zucchini. Add 2 tsp of salt and mix them well. Keep it aside for later use.
- Mesh the tofu. Add in the fermented soy bean paste and the chopped scallion and mix them well.
- Soak the shiitake mushrooms in water for 15 minutes. Squeeze out the water and cut them into small pieces.
- Heat up a wok. Add in the grated carrot, the shiitake mushrooms, soy sauce and oyster sauce. Stir-fry them until the vegetables are cooked. Take them out and leave them in a plate to cool.
- Squeeze the juice out of the zucchini. Mix the zucchini with the other ingredients prepared in the step 2 and 4 to get the filling.
- The Dough
- Melt the yeast in water then mix the water with the flour. Knead the four into a solid dough.
- Rest the dough for 15 minutes. Then knead the dough until the surface becomes smooth.
- Cover the dough and rest it for 2-3 hours until its size doubles. Discover how to prepare the dough in other colors.
- Fold the dumplings
- Take two doughs in different colors and roll them into logs.
- Stick them together using some water as glue to get a bi-colored log.
- Cut the new log into small pieces. Then roll each piece into a round disk.
- Put some filling at the center of the disk and fold it in the form of leave following the instructions below. Take a look at the video recipe at the end of the post to see how to get this fold.
- Cooking on steam
- Put the dumplings in the steamer, leaving some space among each of them. Rest them for 20 minutes.
- Put the steamer on top of a pot with water in it. Turn on the fire.
- When water starts to boil, lower the fire to medium and continue to steam for 15 minutes.
- Turn off the fire and let it cool for 3 minutes.
- Cooking by pan-frying
- Add olio in a skillet to cover the bottom. Turn on the fire.
- Place the dumplings in the skillet, leaving some space among each of them. Pan-fry them on medium heat for 1 minute.
- Pour water from the boarder into the skillet until it covers 1/3 height of the dumplings. Cover the lid and cook the dumplings for 6 minutes.
- Take off the lid. Keep pan-frying the dumplings until all the remaining water evaporates.
Video Recipe
Hope my readers, who are (but not only!) on a vegetarian or vegan diet, will find it helpful and tasty. Great thanks to aunt Lijing, who gave me the idea of this recipe. If one day my work will be recognized and somehow my dishes could be presented to more Italian families, this vegan dumpling will be given a name after her.
When you prepare this dish, don't forget to SHARE IT on your social media using hashtag #cinaintavola and TAG ME @cinaintavola. FOLLOW ME on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Youtube to stay in touch!
