My Chinese friend 孙双came visiting. I met her back in 2005 in Beijing when I was doing an internship at the Italian Embassy, I was in the Economic and Commercial Office, she was in the Visa office. We used to hang out a lot back then helping each other learning me Chinese, her Italian.

Now she is studying in Firenze and decided to come spend Christmas with me and my family. I had so much fun showing her around and have her try lots of different xmas treats.

Then yesterday, after 2 days of full -Italian- food- binging, she offered to make Jiaozi, Chinese dumplings. We made 2 kinds: pork with cabbage, and beef with carrots. Delicious!

You gotta try this one!

Also, just cause I am curious: What did you get for Xmas?

Ingredients:

• 600 g all purpose flour
• about 300 ml water
• 3 tsp salt
• 4 tbsp soy sauce
• 2 tbsp oil
• 2 tbsp green onion
• 1/2 onion
• 1/2 cabbage
• 2 tsp ginger
• 3 carrots
• 200 g ground
• 200 g ground pork

We started out from the dough. We made everything from scratch!

She put all the flour in a bowl, made a little hole in the center and one all around.

Then she started pouring water to fill up both holes

When the holes are full of water it means you have got in enough water. That’s all you need

Next, she start kneading the dough with her hands

until she got a smooth and elastic dough

This is my friend. Isn’t she cute?

Then she covered the bowl with a lid. She said this is needed to soften up a bit the skin

While the dough was resting, we start prepare the filling

We washed the cabbage carefully then chopping it up in very small pieces

you want it to be very small….that’s what 又又 said

then she chopped up the green onion

the onion

and ginger

She put the chopped cabbage in a bowl and sprinkle it with salt. Then she let it rest for about 10-15 min. This is necessary so that the cabbage can release all its water. When 10 min had passed she squeezed the cabbage in her hands to eliminate all the water

Once she was done with that she add salt, ginger, onion and ground pork to the cabbage

Then she pour in about 1 tbsp of soy sauce

and 1 tsp of oil

and with a spoon she mixed all the ingredients together

Then she moved on making the carrots and beef filling

she washed the carrots

then she grated them

added in ground beef, 1 tbsp of green onion and the chopped onion

1 tbsp of soy sauce and 1 tsp of oil

When both filling were ready, she moved back to the dough

Took a cutting board, sprinkle some flour on top

then she took a piece of dough and she rolled it into a long tube

next she cut it out into 1.5 cm pieces

and she slightly flatten them up using her hand

then using a rolling pin she rolled each piece of dough into small circle

Each circle needs to be thinner around the edges and slightly thicker in the center. This is to prevent the filling from coming out when boiling

She added about 1.5 tsp of filling in each circle

then she carefully folded he edges together to seal it

It resulted into a beautiful dumpling

beautiful

beautiful

beautiful

She kept doing so with the remaining fillings (pork and beef)

When all dumplings were ready we boiled them for about 10 min. You know they are ready when they look nice and puffy

We served them with soy sauce…we also tried with balsamic vinegar….divine!

Pour some on a plate

and dip in your dumpling

My favorite one were the carrot with beef, but my dad liked the cabbage with pork better

Give’ em a try!

Healthy, tasty Chinese food 🙂