Vegan Chinese Dumplings

I absolutely fell in love with the Chinese cuisine when I traveled to China last year. I began to realize that Chinese food was definitely something I could live off of! While in China, I ate loads of dumplings and thankfully found some delicious vegan ones there. We already started to miss the Chinese food once we returned to London, so we decided to pick up a few ingredients to make our own!

As we are currently under lockdown and need to stay home, there's no better time to make something more elaborate. This recipe does take some time to make, but it's perfect to help pass all this time we have on our hands and fun to do with a partner or friend at home!

Ingredients:

Dumpling dough wrappers - this recipe makes around 50 dumplings, but you want to make less, you can always save any leftover filling and add it to noodles, rice or quinoa!

1/2 cup chestnut mushrooms (finely chopped)

1/2 cup shiitake mushrooms (finale chopped)

1 cup carrots (shredded)

1/2 block firm tofu (crumbled)

6 cloves garlic

Thumb sized piece ginger

2 red chilis

1/2 pack dried rice vermicelli

2 cups cabbage (shredded)

3 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp rice wine vinegar

1 tsp maple syrup

1/2 tsp curry powder

1/2 tsp paprika

1/2 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp chinese all spice

Salt/pepper

Instructions:

PREPARE THE FILLING:

1. Start by defrosting your dumplings wrappers and leave to the side.

2. Finely chop the mushrooms, garlic, ginger and chili. Grate the carrots, shred the cabbage and crumble the tofu. Leave to the side.

3. Cook the dried rice vermicelli according the the package instructions. Drain and the chop the noodles to around 1/2 inch length. Leave to the side.

4. Add 1 - 2 tablespoons of oil to a large pan or wok on medium heat. Add in the garlic, ginger and chili and stir for 2 minutes. Then add in the mushrooms, carrots and cabbage and stir for 2 minutes. Then add in the crumbled tofu and dried rice noodles.

5. Add in the soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, spices and maple syrup. Stir for 2 more minutes and transfer to a large mixing bowl to cool down.

WRAP THE DUMPLINGS:

1. Lay out the dumplings wrappers and add about a tablespoon worth of filling to each dumpling and fold.

2. A trick to folding is to have a cup of water nearby, dip your finger in the water and spread the water along the top half of the dumpling. Then fold the other half to connect it, making sure there's no air inside.

I would recommend watching this YouTube video on how to best fold dumplings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1o9-82qizc&t=164s

COOK THE DUMPLINGS:

1. To a steamer, add some cabbage leaves to the bottom so every dumpling is sitting on a piece of cabbage.

2. Cover the steamer and cook over high heat for 15 minutes.

3. If you want to eat steamed dumplings, then you're done here, otherwise, you can continue to fry them.

4. If you want the fry the dumplings, add some oil to a pan and place in the dumplings, cooking one side until it turns golden and then flipping to the other side. You will have to do this in batches - same with steaming.

SERVING THE DUMPLINGS:

To serve, I added a dipping sauce which was a few tablespoons of soy sauce with vinegar and chilli oil.