Har gow recipe

Coucou mes chéris. Le Bise was blowing again today and we opted to stay indoors, as we're going to Geneva tomorrow. So when MC from my mushroom club wrote and proposed bringing her daughter over to meet me, I quickly responded "Oui!" and invited both mother and daughter over for un apéro. MC likes Chinese food and has been very polite in refusing my invitations for un apéro whenever she's dropped me off at the house, so I was excited she was coming for a visit and decided to make har gow for her to try.

Har Gow Recipe, adapted from the recipe by Wantanmien on YouTube. Even if you don't understand Cantonese, I recommend watching the video first to see her technique before following my recipe.

Ingredients (Makes 28 pieces)
200g shrimp cut into small pieces (de-veined, de-shelled medium size shrimps; size 16-20)
2 teaspoons of ginger, minced
2 tablespoons of frozen petit pois (pour un peu de couleur). Do not thaw them out.

1 pinch of salt
1 pinch of sugar
1 pinch of white pepper (or black pepper if you don't have white)
2 teaspoons of roasted sesame oil
120 grams wheat starch (farine de froment)
50 grams tapioca starch (farine de tapioca)
2 small pinches of salt
2 teaspoons vegetable oil (I used l'huile de tournesol)
200 ml boiling water

Directions
1. In a medium bowl, add the cut shrimp, ginger, salt, sugar, white pepper, and sesame oil. Mix well. Set aside in the fridge to marinate while you make the dough.

2. In a large bowl, weigh out the wheat starch and tapioca starch. Add the salt. Stir to mix well.

3. Add the oil, and then add the boiling water. Stir quickly to bring the dough together.

4. Leaving the dough in the bowl, knead it for a few minutes until the dough is smooth. If the dough is too wet, you can add a little more tapioca flour so it doesn't stick to the bottom of the bowl.

5. Split the big dough ball into two balls. Then cover the bowl with a very damp cloth towel (but don't let the towel touch the dough).

6. Allow the dough to rest for 5 minutes.

7. After the resting period (I sometimes let mine rest 10 or 15 minutes), take out one dough ball and using both hands, roll it out into a dough rope about 30cm or 12" in length.

8. Cut the rope in two. Then halve that, and continue halving until you have 14 pieces of little round discs that are more or less evenly sized.

9. Leave out one or two of the little dough discs and place the rest in the bowl with the remaining dough ball. Cover the remaining discs with the damp cloth to prevent air-drying.

10. Using the palm of your hand, flatten one dough disc into a round shape about 6cm in diameter (about 2.4"), being careful not to tear the dough. This dough can tear easily if you manhandle it too much.

11. Pace 1 teaspoon of shrimp filling and 3 - 4 frozen petit pois into the middle of the round wrapper and fold over the wrapper, pressing the two sides into one another. I don't do any fancy pleating, but if you'd like to, you can try it. Watch the video.

12. Take out another little dough disc and repeat from steps 10 and 11, forming one dumpling at a time. Once you get used to it, it will go pretty fast!

13. When you've formed a dozen or so, cut a sheet of parchment paper and place it into a 9" bamboo steamer. Brush a bit of vegetable oil onto the parchment paper to prevent sticking. For this size steamer, I can steam about 10 dumplings at a time. Make sure that the dumplings do not touch each other, otherwise they will stick together in a big sticky mess.

14. To a large pot (one that fits your steamer), add about an inch or two of water. Enough water so there's a good steam, but not too much so the bottom of your steamer is not submersed in the water.

15. Place the steamer in the pot, cover the steamer with the bamboo steamer cover and then place the pot's cover on top of the bamboo cover!

16. Turn the heat to medium high and steam for 7 - 8 minutes.

17. Carefully remove the dumplings from the bamboo steamer (wear oven mitts to prevent giving yourself a nasty steam burn).

18. Plate the dumplings and serve immediately with a soy sauce ginger dipping sauce. These dumplings are great hot, and still pretty good luke warm, but not so good cold.

By the way, you can freeze uncooked dumplings on a cookie sheet (make sure they don't touch one another). After they have frozen, you can store them in Ziploc freezer bags for up to a week, possibly longer but I haven't tried. These dumplings don't last long in my house!

Another Variation of Filling with Pork, Napa, Shiitake, Carrots, and Onions
Ingredients
200g ground pork
2 tablespoons finely chopped napa
4 small dried shiitakes (soaked in hot water for about 10-15 minutes, de-stemmed, and then finely chopped)
1 small carrot, shredded
1/2 small onion, minced
1 tablespoon light soy sauce
1 pinch salt
1 pinch white pepper
1 pinch sugar
1/8 teaspoon fish sauce
2 teaspoon roasted sesame oil

Mix all of the above well. Cover and allow to marinate in fridge for at least two hours before using as dumpling filling.