Over Easter break I got to go home to celebrate many different events! Besides enjoying all of the holiday festivities, I also went back to Minnesota for my step-dad’s 50th birthday party! He’ll hate me for outing him online but the point is that we had to do this birthday up big! The food was delicious, the 80’s music was bumpin, and all the socializing occurred throughout the Russian Museum of art, which happened to be our venue of choice. Everything was catered to my dad’s preferences, from the availability of sliders in lieu of his love for hamburgers, to the creation of a signature “Neapolitan martini” that emulated his favorite flavor of ice cream. The party was on Friday night and though I woke up at four am to take the red eye from New York, I did not get a chance to sleep until about the same time Saturday morning. This was due in part to the fact that the party lasted way longer than we expected, but also because we had a movie night afterwards.
It was a great weekend full of family bonding. On Saturday night my Step-sister Emily and I cooked dinner for everyone else. We rarely get to see each other so it was a great chance to catch up on our lives! Emily loves Asian food so we decided to be ambitious and planned to make beef stir fry along and homemade potstickers with a peanut dipping sauce. The food tasted delicious but we definitely ran into a few obstacles along the way.
I encountered the first problem in the grocery store. There was no ground pork! It was astonishing to me that such a large grocery store was lacking something so crucial. I improvised by buying ground turkey, which I like equally as much anyways. I left the supermarket with the meat, an assortment of vegetables, a few varieties of sauce, and some wonton wrappers. I had never attempted to make potstickers from scratch before. This was going to be an interesting night.
Ingredients
Stir Fry
- Carrots
- Broccoli
- Snap Peas
- Baby Corn
- Water Chestnuts
- Beef Strips
- Onions
- Garlic
- Soy Sauce
- Chili Sauce
- Hoisin Sauce
- Pepper
- Chopped Scallions
- Minced Ginger
Potstickers
- Floured Wonton Wraps
- Ground Turkey
- Minced Ginger
- Chopped Scallions
- Chopped Water Chestnuts
- Chopped Cabbage
- Minced Garlic
- Pepper
- Soy Sauce
- One Egg
- Chicken Broth
Peanut Sauce
- Creamy Peanut Butter
- Minced Ginger
- Minced Garlic
- Coconut Milk
- Lime Juice
- Chili Sauce
- Chili Pepper Flakes
- Soy Sauce
Luckily, it turned out that Emily has actually made potstickers before, so I got a little guidance on what to do. We laid out all of our vegetables and got to chopping! I put the meat in a zip lock bag with some ginger, garlic, and soy sauce as a marinade, then began with the cabbage because it requires some weird tricks. Apparently, since cabbage has such a high water content, it is considered best to let the vegetable sit in some salt. The salt draws out the water and then you have to wring the cabbage out. While the cabbage dehydrated in a corner I finished chopping the rest of the ingredients needed for the potstickers while Emily prepped vegetables for the stir fry. I thought the hardest part would be stuffing the wonton wrappers but it turned out to be pretty fun and relatively easy. We simply put a dollop of the meat mixture on a wonton wrapper, then wet the edges, folded the wrapper in half, and squeezed the sides to create a seal. We tried to make the edges look beautiful but quickly gave up on that idea. We ended up with so many dumplings that we froze half and continued on to cook our batch by frying it and then subsequently steaming it in chicken broth. This is where I made my mistake. I accidently poured too much chicken broth. The result was that the wonton wrappers became rather soggy and some would rip apart with the slightest touch. However, even though the presentation was somewhat sloppy, the dumplings tasted amazing! The meat was extremely flavorful from the different onions and soy sauce. In turn the peanut sauce was complimentary to the potstickers with its smooth taste and tang from the lime juice. We heaped generous portions over white rice and enjoyed a long family meal by candlelight. Now it will be just one more month before I am done with school for the year and will be back home again!
