Anglo-Chinese pheasant dumplings
© Tamin Jones

On Chinese New year'due south Eve, which falls this year on Feb 7, families beyond northern Red china will set up i of their essential festive foods, the jiaozi or crescent dumpling. Grandparents, parents and grandchildren will all chip in, rolling pieces of wheaten dough into circles, and and so pinching these neatly around a stuffing. Typically, jiaozi are filled with minced pork, with just the right corporeality of fatty, and fine-chopped Chinese cabbage, garlic chives or another vegetable; the improve-off may stir in some shrimps or even sea cucumber.

The jiaozi, made in Prc for more than ane,200 years, is a culinary concept of infinite possibility. You lot might make them as tiny as the thumbnail-sized jiaozi with which chefs tried to please the Dowager Empress Cixi when she fled later the Boxer Rebellion to Xi'an, or equally large every bit the oversized New Year'due south jiaozi eaten in some parts of Gansu province. If plain white dough doesn't take hold of you lot, you can only colour it with the juice of spinach or carrot.

Always since I spent Christmas as a student in Chengdu I accept made my mince pies similar jiaozi, pinching circles of rich shortcrust pastry around the mincemeat. Recently, I've gone in the other management, making jiaozi with non-Chinese fillings, as here. Remember of these as a kind of love-in between jiaozi, English game pie and Italian ravioli.

© Tamin Jones

Like many steamed Chinese dumplings, these apply a "scalded dough" (tang mian) made by calculation wheat flour to boiling h2o. The boiling water tames the elasticity of the flour's gluten, giving the dumplings a delightfully huggy texture. The dough is easy to gyre and wrap, and doesn't stick to an oiled steamer. Borrowing from English language cookery, I've cut some pork belly into the pheasant filling to make information technology rich and unctuous (the pork peel, removed before serving, gives it a gentle set, which is essential). Veering back in a Chinese direction, I recommend serving the jiaozi with brown rice vinegar, although y'all tin use chilli sauce if you adopt.

In some places, Chinese people hide a coin in the stuffing, which is supposed to bring good luck. Should anyone stumble across a stray piece of shot, you could pretend it ways the same affair.

Fuchsia Dunlop's most contempo book is 'Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Dwelling Cooking'

Anglo-Chinese pheasant dumplings

Makes virtually 30 dumplings.

Brand the stuffing

  1. Joint the pheasant (ask your butcher or watch a video online if you're not sure how). Slice the skin from the belly pork and reserve. Lay the pork on a board and cut across the layers of flesh and fat into 1cm slices, so into 1cm strips.
  2. Fine-chop the onion and leek and cut the carrot into very small dice. Bring a kettleful of water to the boil. Estrus ii tbs oil in a frying pan. Add together the chopped vegetables and fry over a medium rut until beginning to colour, stirring occasionally. Transfer into a saucepan large enough to incorporate all the ingredients.
  3. Wipe the frying pan. Return it to a high heat with some other i tbs oil and fry the abdomen pork until tinged with gilt. Transfer the pork to the bucket, leaving every bit much oil as possible behind. Brown the pheasant in the frying pan, calculation ane tbs oil if yous need it, so transfer to the saucepan. Deglaze the frying pan with the wine and pour the juices into the saucepan.
  4. Add the bay leaves and plenty hot h2o to embrace the ingredients (about 700ml). Bring to the eddy and flavor. And then half cover, turn the heat down low and simmer for one½-2 hours, until the birds are tender. Taste again for salt (bearing in listen that the wrappers are unsalted).
  5. Remove and discard the bay leaves and pork skin. Strain the liquid into some other container and skim off as much oil equally possible. Remove the pheasant pieces from the pan. When cool enough to handle, extract and discard bones and cartilage, along with any shot. Cut the meat into 1cm dice. Return to the pot, along with the skimmed liquid. Mix well. Get out to cool and then chill overnight to prepare.

Make the wrappers

  1. Mix the flours in a bowl. Bring 350ml water to the eddy in a deep bucket. Turn off the heat, tip in about four-fifths of the flours and stir briskly with a wooden spoon until the mixture forms soft clumps. When cool enough to handle, dust a work surface with some of the extra flour, shape the clumps into a ball of dough and knead until polish, adding more extra flour if necessary — you desire a soft dough that does not stick to your hands. Cover with a moisture tea towel if not using immediately.
  2. Accept a fist-sized piece of dough and whorl into a sausage 2.5cm thick. Cut or break off walnut-sized pieces (about 20g). Dust lightly with flour, then stand each piece, cut-sized up, on the surface and flatten to a disc with the palm of your paw. Repeat with the rest of the dough.

Gather the dumplings

  1. Roll each disc into a circle about 9cm in bore. The Chinese way is to utilise a narrow rolling pin and rotate the disc equally y'all roll inwards from its edge, taking care not to roll over the centre of the disc.
  2. Place about one tbs (20g) stuffing in the centre of a disc and pinch the edges together to form a dumpling. Echo. Lightly oil a steamer handbasket and lay the dumplings in well-spaced rows. Cover and steam over high oestrus for well-nigh 10 minutes. Serve immediately with Chinkiang vinegar or chilli sauce for dipping. The uncooked dumplings tin can likewise be frozen and steamed directly from the freezer (cooking time almost 12 minutes).

Photographs: Tamin Jones

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