Viet World Kitchen

Bringing New Year Dumplings to Busy Families

This is Henry. He’s about 3 1/2 years old and experiencing his first Asian dumpling. Many of my friends started families not long ago and consequently, it’s been difficult for us to schedule normal adult activities. For this Year of the Dragon, I decided to bring the ‘adult’ activity of making and eating dumplings to a couple of friends and their kids.

I made a big batch of filling, some of which I used on Monday and Tuesday. There was plenty leftover by Wednesday, when we had a 5pm cocktail hour date with Diane and John (Henry’s parents). We typically bring over a bottle of wine along with nuts or cheese and bread to nibble on. This time, my husband and I walked in with:

Lucky Chinese New Year Dumplings

When Lunar New Year comes around, I like to pile on the Asian symbols of good luck – especially when it comes to food. Traditional Vietnamese Tet foods have certain cultural symbols. Foods like banh chung sticky rice cakes wrapped in banana leaves echo the modesty and resourcefulness of Vietnamese cooks. There are just a handful of ingredients that go into that sensational preparation.

Whereas Viet Tet foods are humble, Chinese New Year foods are loaded with promises of fortune. Next week when we celebrate Lunar New Year on January 23 and 24, I’m planning a menu of Vietnamese Tet foods and Chinese New Year dumplings. I haven’t narrowed down which ones to make but here are some candidates:

Jiaozi dumplings – I love these hearty dumplings (a sample is pictured above) this time of the year. They are little bundles of joy. Their shape resemble gold ingots so eating lots of them during Chinese New Year is suppose to invite good fortune. The term jiaozi (“gee-OW zeh”) generically applies to a broad category of dumplings in the Chinese repertoire.

It’s a northern Chinese tradition for families to gather and made a ton of jiaozi dumplings. Some people roll out the dough into individual skins while others fill and cook the dumplings. The hot dumplings get tumbled in a mess of soy sauce, vinegar and chile oil for a great warming snack. The filling can be meaty or vegetarian. I suppose you could even make gluten-free dumplings too!

Poached dumplings (think ravioli) are most traditional but heck, it’s the Year of the Dragon and you’re free to go crazy. Panfry the dumplings into pot stickers or deep-fry them into crisp pockets of joy. Or steam them. You could even make Tibetan momos or Japanese pot stickers as riffs. The first chapter of Asian Dumplings offers a whole host of options. You could even make a filling on the fly.

Gluten-Free Bun Trilogy: Dough, Baked Buns, Steamed Buns

It started last week with an email from a gluten-free Asian dumpling lover who asked about Indonesian buns (bao) made of rice flour dough. Then there was a tweet from @chubbybuns_shop in Boise, Idado, asking if I’d ever made gluten-free bao. I have poked and held enough loaves of gluten-free breads to know that it would be a challenge to create fluffy, chewy dough that could be baked and steamed.

Marvin of Burnt Lumpia asked if I knew how to make Filipino rice flour siopao (stuffed bao). No I didn’t but figured that the Filipinos may mix rice flour with other flours. Given the Filipino- style bao, I figured that I could come up with something. I wasn’t a fool for taking on the challenge of creating gluten-free bao dough.

I looked through several gluten-free sources and decided to base the dough recipe on a cinnamon roll dough from Cybele Pascal’s reliable Allergen-Free Baker’s Handbook. I chose it because it had similar elements as my regular bao dough in Asian Dumplings: flour, fat, sugar, liquid, and leavening. It wasn’t such a big leap, going from Western cinnamon rolls to stuffed Asian buns.

Gluten-Free Baked Buns (Bao) Recipe

Baked gluten-free buns are less tricky to make than steamed ones because you bake them in the same pan that you let them rise in. The result looks like giant macarons or pfeffernusse – low domes. They’re firmer and denser than your typical baked bao, but they are tasty in their own right.

Making a flavorful filling is important because it stamps the bao with extra texture and savor. I used char siu pork for the ones pictured above. Other filling options are mentioned below for savory and sweet buns. If you’re super sensitive to gluten, you’ll have to figure out alternatives for certain Asian ingredients used in the fillings. See this post for guidance on gluten-free Asian ingredients.

Gluten-Free Steamed Bun (Bao) Recipe

Prepared with a rice flour-and-starch dough, these steamed gluten-free bao remind me of sticky-rice dumplings, though the gluten-free ones are firmer, buff in color, and  bit translucent in appearance. They’re good tasting and I'd gladly offer them to guests who have a difficult time with gluten.

You’ll have to let the formed buns rise in a deep baking pan, then transfer them to a steamer tray to cook. When I let the buns rise in a bamboo steamer tray, the dough didn’t have a warm enough environment to rise due to the open nature of the steamer tray. It took f.o.r.e.v.e.r. to get yeasty action going.