I’m not sure it would truly count as Spring if I didn’t make something glorious and green with wild garlic!
If you can’t get wild garlic, or it’s out of season, you can use garlic chives as an alternative and still get that lovely allium flavour through the dumplings. If you can’t get these either you can replace with spinach, and then add a minced garlic clove to the prawn filling – you will still get a gorgeous green hue in the dumpling wrappers, and the addition of a garlic clove to the mixture will add all the flavour you need.
Makes 12 dumplings
Ingredients
For the dumpling skins
- 50g wild garlic or spinach leaves
- 108g plain flour
- 12g corn flour
For the filling
- 150g raw prawns, minced
- 50g bamboo shoots, roughly chopped
- 5g fresh ginger, finely chopped
- 1 tsp corn flour
- 2 tsp soy sauce
- 1 tsp sesame oil, plus extra for cooking
- White pepper to taste
- (1 garlic clove, minced if using spinach)
- 1 tsp rapeseed oil
Method
- To make the dumpling skins start by blending the wild garlic leaves to a paste. Strain the liquid off, weighing it as you do.
- In a bowl, add the plain and corn flour, mixing together.
- Take the strained liquid and top up with boiling water to make a total of 62g of liquid. Add this hot mixture to the flour and stir to a shaggy mixture. Cover and leave for 10-30 minutes.
- Knead the dough till it is smooth and elastic. Cover and rest for 30-60 minutes.
- Meanwhile prepare your filling by mixing all the ingredients together, except for the rapeseed oil.
- Roll the dough into a long sausage shape and divide into 12 equal rounds.
- Take one round, and cover the reaming pieces of dough, and press down with the palm of your hand on the cut surface to create a flat disk. Using a rolling pin, roll from the centre out, turn a quarter and repeat till you have created a round flat disk with a thin edge.
- If not using immediately, cover to prevent it from drying it out as you continue to roll out the remaining dough.
- Take one dumpling skin and fill it with a heaped teaspoon of the mixture. Using a little water over one half of the inside of the dough, start from one end and gently pinch with an overlap to seal each dumpling in a crescent shape. Repeat with the rest of the dough and mixture.
- Add the rapeseed oil to a frying pan and heat gently. Arrange the dumplings so they have at least 1cm between each dumpling – you may need to cook them in batches depending on the size of your pan.
- Cook for 2-3 minutes on a medium heat till the bottom turns golden on the bottom.
- Boil the kettle and add water directly into the pan so it come up to the bottom third of the dumpling. Immediately cover with a lid to steam the dumplings.
- After 5 minutes, remove the lid and allow any remaining liquid to evaporate off, add a dash of sesame oil to finish and crisp the bottom for 1 minute.
- Remove from the pan and enjoy hot.
Per 4 dumplings: 232kcal/ 5.3g fat/ 0.8g saturated fat/ 32g carbohydrates/ 2.7g fibre/ 13g protein