I think it is safe to say that my obsession with Japanese food started with my first visit to Wagamama back in…sheesh, was it 2004? I was in my first year of university and a Wagamama had just opened up on High Street Kensington above Habitat and Urban Outfitters (note: Habitat isn’t there anymore according to Google). Once inside and up the stairs, I was seated in a huge, open-plan, white room with long, white benches and tables, where you ate “communally,” next to other diners, and had a clear view of the goings-on in the kitchen, which made up the back wall of the restaurant. The fold out menus had a wide range of noodle, rice, soup and side dishes, each with a corresponding order number just like in takeaway menus where you call up and say things like, “We’ll have a number 3, two orders of 14, a 25, and oh, extra poppadoms, please?” Anyway, I think I ordered a yaki udon, ebi gyoza and a raw juice, which the waiter quickly plugged into a black, handheld device before scrawling in incredibly illegible handwriting either the order numbers of our dishes or some very abstract avent garde artwork with a ginormous coloured marker.
At Wagamama, the food arrives as and when everything is ready. There is no waiting around for starters and main. Just BAM. There it is. And BAM, there it was. When those ebi gyoza hit my palate, they blew my tiny student mind. I had never had a gyoza dumpling before. Sure, I had eaten noodle and rice dishes galore, but these soft yet crunchy prawn bundles with the satisfying savouriness of the sesame seed oil and the zing of ginger mixed with the chew of the prawn and crunch of the water chestnut…well! They were something I had never experienced. They were out of this world. And I was obsessed.
Every time I went to Wagamama, I would order them and try to remember the ingredients and sequence of the erupting flavours and textures in my mouth so that I could recreate them at home. I had no idea how they made the dough and, in those days, you couldn’t just google it online. Websites were limited to maps, company sites and strange homemade webpages about people’s cats and favourite World of Warcraft figurines. So I used phyllo pastry, made little bundles and baked them in the oven. Flavour-wise, I was there, but texture-wise, they didn’t have the soft chew of the gyoza wrapper and it was only much later when I learnt how to make soup dumplings that I started making them with homemade or shop bought gyoza wrappers.
While the filling comes together pretty quickly, I guess the tricky part of making these is tucking the filling to bed in each little wrapper and folding the pleats. It is a labour of love, but they are worth it and only take about 10 minutes of repetitive spooning and folding. If you like making spaghetti and meatballs, then it’s akin to rolling up a batch of balls! And, also don’t worry too much about the folds — as long as they’re sealed, then that’s good enough for me!
But really, make these. I rarely find that things can be both devilishly moreish and refreshing at the same time, but these are. The balance of textures and flavours are absolute perfection, and as much as I dislike sounding like a soundbite from Nigel Slater’s cookery shows, I can’t help myself… (mood music please, ahem…) “The sweet notes of the prawns and rice vinegar balance the savouriness of the garlic and sesame. The crunchy crispness of the water chestnuts and dumpling bases contrast beautifully with the soft chew of the steamed wrapper and prawns. And the smooth mellow tones of the spinach and soy sauce are punctuated perfectly with hits of heat and tang from the chili and ginger”.
Nothing gets better than a plate of gyoza. They are a sensational eating experience that gives new meaning to the word juxtaposition.
(By the way, if you don’t have access to an Asian supermarket and do not wish to make your own gyoza wrappers, phyllo pastry still works as a good enough substitute — especially if flavour is all you’re going for. Just follow the cooking instructions on the packet. Also, if you cannot access water chestnuts, white cabbage or napa cabbage works well although be aware that it will not be as crunchy as the water chestnut).
Ingredients
dumplings
2 spring onions (65g)
200g water chestnuts (canned) or 2 large leaves of napa cabbage (130g)
3 large handfuls of spinach (thick stalks removed) (100g once sauteed)
270g raw peeled and deveined prawns
1 tablespoon grated ginger
1 tablespoon grated/crushed garlic
1 tablespoon toasted sesame seed oil
1–2 packs of gyoza skins (need 30 skins at least)
Sunflower seed/vegetable oil (neutral oil, not olive oil)
100ml water
dipping sauce
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
Pinch of chili flakes
Method
1. Wash the spring onions well under the tap, remove the ends and chop finely. You want to have approximately 65g of chopped spring onions.
2. Drain and rinse the water chestnuts and chop finely (or remove and discard the outer leaves of a napa cabbage. Then take two large leaves, cut off the bottom of the leaf and chop finely including the white stalky middle. You want to have approximately 130g of chopped cabbage).
3. Thoroughly wash and dry three large handfuls of spinach. Remove any thick stalks. Heat a couple tablespoons of vegetable oil in a large frying pan and sautée the spinach until wilted. No need to cook beyond this point otherwise it will turn to mush. Squeeze off all the liquid and then finely chop on a chopping board once cooled.
4. Rinse and dry the raw prawns and chop finely until you achieve a minced meat consistency.
5. To make the filling, add the chopped spring onions, water chestnuts or cabbage, spinach and prawns to a large bowl. Add the ginger, garlic and toasted sesame seed oil and mix everything well. You can start off mixing everything with a spoon, but it is best to just roll up your sleeves and use your hands. This ensures all the flavours are really well incorporated and that you get a little bit of everything in each gyoza!
6. In preparation for making the dumplings, lay out a sheet of greaseproof paper and dust it with a thin layer of corn flour.
7. To make the dumplings, lay one gyoza wrapper in the palm of your hand. To the centre of the wrapper, add a teaspoon of the filling.
8. Wet the edges of the gyoza wrapper with cold water and fold the wrapper in half, folding small pleats of one half of the wrapper and pinching it against the other side of the wrapper to form the recognizable pleats. If this is too difficult, don’t worry and just fold the two halves of the wrapper together and join the edges together. It won’t affect the taste!
9. Place the dumpling on the greaseproof paper and continue making the rest. As I said, this is a labour of love so put on the radio, listen to some good tunes or a good podcast. They are worth it!!
10. Once all are made, heat a couple tablespoons of oil in a wide frying pan. You will need a pan with a lid so that you can steam them. So make sure you don’t start cooking them until you have the lid at your side. You don’t want to be rummaging around in cupboards at the last minute.
11. When the oil is hot, add each dumpling to the pan rubbing the base of the dumpling briefly in the oil before adding the next.
12. Once all the dumplings have been added to the pan (you may want to do this in batches — you don’t want to over crowd the pan), check the base of the first couple of dumplings that you added to monitor the colour development. You want the base to be a dark golden brown. You may need to move your pan around on the hob to heat up and cool down different sections of the pan to make sure all the dumplings brown evenly. Make full use of your hob and take the time to give your dumplings some individual attention.
13. When all the bases have browned evenly, add enough water to the pan to fill the pan by 0.5 cm. The quantity of water will depend on the size of your pan. As soon as you have added the water, cover quickly and firmly with a lid. You will want to steam the dumplings in this way for about 5 minutes or until all the water has evaporated.
14. You will know the dumplings are ready once they become slightly translucent. If the dough is still opaque, and all the water has evaporated, you may need to add more water.
15. To serve the dumplings, place a large serving plate over the pan and carefully flip the frying pan and the plate so that the golden-brown bases of the dumplings are facing up. If this is too tricky, you can of course use a spatula and arrange each one individually.
16. Start your guests off with a simple dipping sauce by mixing the soy sauce, rice vinegar, toasted sesame seed oil and chili flakes. Then leave the bottles and chili out for your guests to mix up themselves. You can also give them some grated ginger on the side if they want to add a bit of zing to their sauce!
