Kathryn Hu | Leader, Philosopher, Visionary

I came home a couple of hours ago dejected about my situation: with the blog due tonight and without inspiration, it looked as though I’d be writing another post of questionable topic and quality. But the universe had my back.

Thursday, April 6th:

14:30: I get home after eating lunch and find my dad leaving to go to the doctor. He’s been sick for a couple of weeks but this marks a new low. This does not bode well for me.

ideal Christmas present

14:32: I walk into my house and contemplate firing up our family grill for a wok hay experiment as a blog post. Realizing that I’d probably burn myself or, worse, ruin a pan, I brainstorm for other ideas. These ranged from finally completing my noodle series (funny) to ranking the food I ate over Spring Break (unoriginal, see first blog post after winter break). 

14:35: My mom walks downstairs and says hi. 

Two seconds after she says hi: I realize she’s sick too. For context, this is a big deal because my mom rarely gets sick–that

the ones she made

is, relative to the rest of my family. If I were to rank us from most to least prone to illness it would go me (always sick), my sister (usually sick from me), my dad (sometimes sick from me, this long bout is an unlucky one off), and last would be my mom (usually in good health). This paired with the fact that I was most definitely the one who infected her meant that I’d be nothing short of a terrible person if I didn’t listen to whatever request she had for me. In a sort of twisted way, her plague and subsequent request actually worked out in my favor. My mom has been making dumplings the past week and, in light of her new condition, needed me to finish making them. I can’t really speak much to this specific recipe since I don’t know anything about it. Everything was already prepared, she just needed me to finish the assembly. However, since I desperately need the words, I’ll write about what dumpling recipes usually are.

The dough: Dumpling wrappers are made of unleavened dough. If they were risen, there would be no signature thin skin. I’m also unsure about how boiling a leavened dough would go–I imagine not well. Since this dough is yeastless, the wrapper is usually two ingredients, just water and flour. But even though there are only two ingredients, there are still a myriad of factors that affect the texture and consistency. Primarily, this will be hydration level and water temperature. Fun fact! I’ve never actually made dumplings start to finish, so I can’t give any useful tips or insight relating to any of these things. Since this is the case, I will just move on. 

The filling: Chicken and beef fillings exist, but pork is the most common. Chinese people love pork–and for good reason. Dumpling filling needs to be fatty to have flavor, so pork is the natural choice. Though meat is the foremost ingredient, the flavor and distinguishing factor of the filling comes from add-ins–the vegetable that the meat is paired with. I am 90% sure that my mom was trying something new with pickled cabbage instead of regular cabbage (also a popular choice), but I didn’t ask so maybe I’m dead wrong. 

My job wasn’t very difficult. I just needed to portion out the dough, roll that out, and fold the dumplings. This was not that much to ask, but I still did terrible work. Occasionally, on Chinese New Year, my family will fold dumplings together. I’m always relegated to rolling out the dough since I can’t fold for my life. Since I had plenty of practice, rolling out the dough (though that wasn’t splendid either) was what I did best. 

Everything up until the point where I had to fill and fold had

travesty

been running smoothly, so I was terribly overconfident when the time came. 

And then everything fell apart. 

Today I learned that I’m stunningly and uniquely bad at folding dumplings. Not only did I realize too late that my wrappers were far too large, my folds are just really ugly. To be clear: the lack of distinct creases or whatever is not the problem here. I was taught my mom’s technique–the efficient one, the issue is just that I’m awful at it.. But even though I feel bad for whoever is going to eat those (I’ll be avoiding dumplings), at least it made for content–even if this was also kind of bad.