Mooshie Mooshie

Just after we got married, a Japanese friend taught my wife how to make gyoza dumplings. The variations are plentiful, we used beef spiced with garlic, ginger and green onions folded into a wonton wrapper. At our first dinner party we served fillet Mignon trying to be all upscale. We got worried when we thought we had miscalculated the amount of food we would need to serve our guests. April went to the freezer, pulled out the dumplings, steam fried them, and served with a spicy soy dipping sauce. The fillets sat lonely on the plate while the dumplings disappeared post haste. There were problems though. As hard as we tried we could not remember the name of the dumplings, so they were christened as mooshie mooshies and remained a staple in our meal plans. Another problem was they were labor intensive and for the life of me I could not make the pleated folds required to seal them.

It had been sometime since we've made mooshie mooshies but now with our newfound gadget they are simple to seal and the freezer is again full of these wonderful goodies. The gadget of which I speak is a dumpling maker by Joyce Chen, a source for a number of Asian cooking tools.

Just put a store bought wonton wrapper in the center add a small amount of meat, wet the edges with water and fold.

easy peasey
Here is a link for dumplings made by Good Fork Restaurant in Red Hook New York. Chef Kim used it to beat Bobby Flay on his Throw down show.