I’ve been eating rather rich food the last few days, so I was keen to have something fresh and clean for dinner. Ok, so I had chips for lunch. I was craving mashed potatoes with oodles of cream and cheese and fries were a good way to satisfy my potato craving without compromising my vegan ways. But I digress. Point: clean and fresh for dinner.
I have no idea how I dreamed up the idea of dim sum for dinner. it just felt right. The only problem is that all the store-bought wonton wrappers I’ve ever bought are rather yellow, which must mean they’re made with egg yolks, right? I could make my own wonton wrappers, but is there even a thing such as vegan wonton wrappers?
Turns out, no-egg wonton wrappers do exist and they’re not even that difficult to make. I used this recipe with a few modifications; I ended up using a touch more water than recommended and I didn’t have the patience to rest the dough for a full 20 minutes.
Not keen to roll the wrappers out by hand (impossible with my carpal tunnel issues anyway) I dug my pasta maker out of my cupboard and rolled them out nice and easy (-ish).
Aren’t my wonton wrappers pretty?
l set them aside, and threw some red onion, garlic, ginger, half an aubergine, half a handful of cashew nuts and some yellow pepper into my food processor.
Blitz!
When blitzed, I turned it out into a bowl and threw in some tahini, sesame oil, chinese five spice, salt and loads of fresh coriander.
I mixed the filling up and then spooned it onto my cut wonton wrappers, before sealing the ends with water and squeezing the bits together.
this being my first attempt, the dumplings… erm… varied in size…
Little and less little dumplings.
I lined the bottom of my steamer with baking paper then steamed the whole lot for 20 minutes (you really just need to steam them until the wrappers turn translucent).
Dinner time! I whizzed together a quick dipping sauce of garlic, ginger, sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, chili flakes and some dry white wine to have with the dumplings.
Verdict: Pretty darned good. But this was the first meal this week where I missed animal protein.
What I would do differently: Add pork. All dumplings need pork. It’s just the way it is. I’d also try and be more consistent with the amount of filling per dumpling.
What I would keep the same: I’m super impressed with the wrappers I made from scratch. Also, the dipping sauce is amazing.
Would I make them again? Probably not.. unless there was some pork in there 🙂
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