Homemade Chinese Dumplings 施家虾仁鲜肉水饺

A week after the official launch of our premium quality extra virgin olive oil from Spain, these are what we have learnt so far. While people are aware of its health benefits, there are misconceptions on the use of extra virgin olive oil in our daily culinary preparation too. Thus, we would like to share these simple but important facts of extra virgin olive oil that few people are aware.

Extra virgin olive oil has taste – aroma. We can smell it, and when we consume a tablespoon of it, we are able to savour and enjoy its fruitiness or freshly cut grass flavour, and sometimes spiciness and bitterness, if we practice our tasting skill well.

In actual fact, when an olive oil Master Taster describes an extra virgin olive oil, he/she will say something like the following:

The extra virgin olive oil distinguishes itself through its rather complex taste profile of green-ripe fruity medium intensity, with notes of grass, leaf and fruit such as apples or bananas. The palate entry is sweet with a moderate bitter and slightly spicy. — Taste Profile of Mueloliva Picuda.

Only with the understanding of the aroma of an extra virgin olive oil could we then decide which type of olive oil we should use in our cooking.

In the preparation of the chili oil for the homemade Chinese dumplings, we have decided to use Muelolive Picuda instead of Mueloliva Clásica as we wanted to infuse the olive taste into the chili oil.

It would not be a complete meal without having chili oil to accompany the main dish. We use the chili oil with our homemade Chinese dumplings (施家虾仁鲜肉水饺). Here are the ingredients and steps to prepare the dumplings and chili oil.

HOMEMADE CHINESE DUMPLINGS 施家虾仁鲜肉水饺

INGREDIENTS:

• 1kg of minced pork;
• 1/2kg of shrimp meat, cut into three or four smaller pieces;
• Spring onion and ginger, chopped into fine pieces;
• One Chinese cabbage, washed and minced;
• One egg;
• Taiwanese dumpling skin;
• Salt, pepper, corn flour, soy sauce, sesame oil (amount to be added according to personal preference);

STEPS:

1. After preparation of all ingredients, crack the egg into the bowl of minced meat and add a suitable amount of salt, pepper, corn flour, soy sauce and sesame oil.
2. Stir the mixture thoroughly for one to two minutes.
3. Proceed by adding the minced cabbage, spring onions, ginger and chopped shrimp meat into the bowl. The cabbage must soak into hot water for about 3 minutes, then squeeze the excess water out of it before and after chop it into pieces. Stir the mixture with all the ingredients inside and set aside. The filling is now complete.
4. Taking one dumping skin, grab a suitable amount of filling and place in the centre. Prepare a small bowl of water and dip fingers into the water, making it damp. Then, line the top half edge of the dumpling skin with water and bring the bottom half of the skin to meet with the top half. Pinch the centre, then pinch the rest of the edges to secure the filling inside the skin.
5. Place wrapped dumplings on a plate with a piece of paper below it so that the skin does not stick to the plate.
6. To cook the dumplings, put them only after the water has boiled in the pot. Stir the dumplings in the pot to prevent them from sticking to the bottom of the pot.
7. Halfway through the process, add another bowl of water.
8. When the dumplings have floated to the top, they are ready to be eaten.

HOMEMADE CHILI OIL

INGREDIENTS:

• Thailand chilli powder;
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil;

DIRECTIONS:

1. Place a suitable amount of chilli powder into a bowl sprinkle some salt and set aside.
2. Heat up the extra virgin olive oil in a pan for roughly a minute. Then, pour the heated oil into the bowl of chilli powder. The chilli oil is now ready.

The Little Things That We Do, Count.

Another simple fact that perhaps most of us have overlooked is that premium quality extra virgin olive oil is “olive juice”, as what it would be called in the West.

We use cooking oil everyday to prepare our meals for our kids and family. Have we ever paused in our life to ponder whether the cooking oil we use could be beneficial to the health of our kids and family in the long run? Wouldn’t we feel more relieved knowing that our family members are consuming “olive juice” in their daily meal consumption?

We are refresh when we have enough hour of sleep. We can’t possibly turn back the clock and reverse the damage it has impacted us to make up the lost hours in sleep through sleeping more hours.

We need to balance work and exercise to remain healthy and physically fit. We can’t recuperate our lost health through working out more in the gym.

Little things count. Continuous and persistent use of healthy oil will eventually pay-off when our kids grow up and our family members grow old.

Small little things make a difference!