I just signed up for Winter Harvest, because I want the stress of CSA veg year-round. It's a buying club, it's not like I'll end up with veg I didn't choose. I like that it starts right when this farmshare ends, and goes through most of the boring frozen vegetable season. Last year, because I had so much extra farmshare veg, I had a freezer full of fresh-frozen veg to get me through winter, and it lasted until about March. This year, not so much. So I'll have Winter Harvest, and then I'll probably end up farm-marketing for a few weeks until my next CSA starts. Looking forward to not having much of a gap. I'd like to go to the grocery store just once every month or two for olive oil and quinoa and junk food.
On my list of things to do with farmshare veg at the end of the week:
Dumplings
Dumplings, wontons, pot stickers, whatever, this isn't an authentic version of any one of them, it's just that I had too much baby bok choy and it was losing it's crispness, and then these carrots weren't all that firm, and it was time to stuff it inside of something.
I had frozen some tofu a while back, because that helps the texture get more "meaty." If you've been served tofu in a restaurant and asked yourself why your at-home tofu doesn't have the same firmness and substance, it's likely that the restaurant froze it. Tofu masquerading as chicken tends to be frozen. So, a while back (months), I threw half a block in the freezer.
When I unwrapped it, it looked like this:
When I defrosted it and sliced it, and squeezed it out with my hands, it looked like this:
Frozen tofu more readily accepts marinades. It absorbs like for real. Sous Chef Brian made up a normal half-block-of-tofu-worth of marinade and I poured it on top, and the tofu drank it and asked for more. So we made more.
Soy, hoisin, rice vinegar, grated ginger, minced garlic, chili paste.
And three heads of baby bok choy, minced. It's a big bowl, that's probably three cups.
And a handful of mushrooms (I used creminis)
And a small onion.
And a few cloves of garlic.
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| Yes, something went wrong here. But you know what color garlic is, so you're ok. |
Mix that all together with two diced carrots.
Add the tofu and mix that all together.
And then we made 24 dumplings, which used just a little more than half of the filling, so we made the rest into a stir fry the next day. You could, of course, make half as much filling or twice as many dumplings.
At this point, we put 3 inches of water in a pot and put the steamer on top. We lined up our Nasoya wonton wrappers and got to making wontons.
Wet the edges, fold two corners together, and seal corner.
Fold in another side, and seal the edge (not just the corner)
And do it again with the other side.
Spritz the steamer with oil and add as many wontons as you can without them touching. When they touch, they merge. We got 5-6 in each batch. Steam 5-10 minutes (closer to 5 worked fine) until transparent and cooked through.
Meanwhile, I made a dipping sauce. Two parts mustard, one part soy.
This is what they look like when they're done. Shiny and translucent, but still soft.
We made 24, and it was late and I didn't make anything else to go with it, so we ate quite a few, like 9 each. If you have other food, obviously, call these a side dish.
