Interesting Recipes....

Some examples of fillings: prawn and spinach; mixed mushroom; carrot, onion, mushroom; boiled egg and chives. You can use meat too...although it's off the menu for me.

Chinese dumplings are also a nice change if you have a bit more time to prep all the fillings. The dough is surprisingly easy to make. I just used pasta flour and mixed it with a little water, kneaded for a while until the dough springs back when it's prodded. I then covered, left in fridge, carried on chopping and dicing the fillings I wanted to use, then came back to it after about 40mins and re-kneaded. By then the dough is pretty elastic. I rolled it into long sausages with diameter of about an inch; then pinched small nuggets off the end that look like roughly inch-sized dough balls. Then I patted each of them into flat little pizzas and on a floured chopping board using floured rolling pin, rolled them out to about the size of your palm. Once you have this you can start loading in your filings. Each dumpling takes about 1- 1 1/2 teaspoons of filling; hence why dicing the fillings is best. Also, you can dress them with a little sauce; lemon, vinegar, a little oil if you like, but be sure any juice is drained before filling the dumplings otherwise they are likely to fall apart in the cooking process. Sealing the dumplings is an art-form; the first few times they may not look as pretty as in the restaurants, but the taste will be there and they should hold when steamed or boiled. I take a pastry disc in my palm, spoon some filling into the dumpling, then hold the dumpling at each end and, like you are making origami,fold in the corners first; then fold up one side by pinching the dough so that it overlaps the dough nearer the top of the dumpling. Do the same with the other side. The trick is to pinch to seal the dough together. There can be NO holes in your dough and NO openings. Re-pinching is fine just to make sure the dumpling is sealed. Similarly,do not allow any filling or liquid from any undrained filling to sit on the seal of your dumpling, as they will open up during cooking. Then either boil or steam. Boiling is quicker and you'll know they are cooked when the dumplings float at the top of your saucepan. It's easier to boil when you are a dumpling beginner, as steaming takes longer, especially if you haven't made the dough as thin as possible. Gauging how thin you can make the dough depends on the cooking process you want to use and also how small you dice your filling, what fillings you use and how much you pack the dumpling with filling. But these are a great dish to learn to make and very versatile. You can serve with the usual Chinese dips: soya sauce, gingrr paste, vinegar, garlic in oil, chilli oil, plum sauce and even steam some Chinese veggies to complement if you like. Good to try if you have a pair of hands to help you out,or if you have time to be creative one day. And you will know exactly what ingredients you used in your dumplings and also that they are MSG-free and actually pretty nutrious too! <em>edited by summertime001 on 07/10/2013</em>

With those potatoes I also did steamed fish, pak choi,green beans and carrots. I steamed the whole lot on the oven for about 20-30mins after having rubbed the fish in chillies, lemon juice, lots of ginger and black pepper. I also added a clove of garlic per fish parcel. I wrapped them in tin foil, sealing off any openings to create a little parcel and popped them in oven. They steamed lovely and all the veggies were infused with the lovely gingerand chilli and lemon also, but only a hint,compared with the fish, which had had the mix rubbed into it. These went down a treat with the spuds.