dumplings – What’s Cookin’ Good Lookin’?

Beef and Bean Chilli pie with Cornbread Dumplings

I so often wonder what – if anything – my kids will think about the food they ate growing up. I grew up with solid, nutritious meals that were pretty typical of Australian households in the ’80s and 90’s: meat and 3 veg, sausages, and my very favourite, spaghetti bolognese. How I eat as an adult is SO different to how I ate as a child, and because I wasn’t a particularly adventurous eater growing up, I still feel I have a hell of a lot of learning to do. It pleases me that my kids already love trying new things and exploring the cultural elements of cooking, eating, and learning about food. I hope that this continues into their adult years, and that when they think back on it (do people other than me do this? Maybe not.), they recognise that a big part of the reason I’m always trying new recipes is because it’s important to me that they try new things and appreciate the origins and contexts of the food they eat.

Anyway, all that actually has little to do with this recipe, which isn’t particularly difficult or exotic. It’s just an insight into the things that run through my head when I’m cooking. Tonight went from “I hope my daughter likes this… I wonder if I’d have liked this when I was 9?” to something more existentially wanky.

It’s clearly a bit carby and cheesy, but still, it just hits 500 calories, which is reasonable. It’s a big recipe, in that it serves 6, but nobody will complain at lunchtime tomorrow! The original recipe from Womens Weekly Veg Night at Home was (obviously) vegetarian, but I swapped out two cans of beans for 500g lean mince, and honestly, I’m not at all sorry.

Ingredients

1tbs olive oil

1 medium onion, diced

1 medium yellow capsicum (any colour is fine, but yellow is my favourite), diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

500g lean beef mince

400g can red kidney beans, drained and rinsed.

2tsp cayenne powder (adjust for taste – this is spicy but bearable)

1tsp ground cumin

1tsp paprika

1tsp ground coriander

800g tinned diced tomatoes

1.5 cups beef stock

Cornbread dumplings

1.5 cups self raising flour

1.5 cups polenta

90g butter, chopped

1 egg

50g grated cheddar

100g corn kernels (frozen is fine, and don’t worry about defrosting them)

2tbs milk.

Method

Preheat oven to 200C.
Heat oil over medium-low heat in an oven proof skillet. Add onion, capsicum and garlic, and cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes until softened.
Add mince, and cook on high heat for 5 minutes, until browned. Add beans, tomatoes, stock and spices, and bring to the boil. Reduce heat to medium and simmer, uncovered, for 15 minutes until thickened slightly.
Meanwhile, combine flour and polenta and rub in butter until it resembled very damp sand. Stir in egg, corn, cheddar and milk, to combine into a sticky dough.
Remove the chilli from heat. Form 6 balls of dough and gently drop onto the chilli. Bake for 20 minutes, or until dumplings have cooked through and turned golden.

Sweet Chilli Dumpling Stir Fry

Why did I never think to do this?! Why did I inhabit this planet for 33 years without this?!

I LOVE stir fry, we eat some version of it weekly. I LOVE dumplings. My whole family would subsist on nothing but pot stickers, xiao long bao and wontons, given half the chance. Combining the two was so obvious. So perfect. So… not something I’d ever considered until I came across a recipe from taste.com.au. I’ve made it a couple of times, and never the same way twice: different dumplings, different veggies, different ratios. The sauce is amazing, and that always stays the same, but the beauty of stir fry is that you use what you have. So this recipe is a guideline, a serving suggestion at best. But a truly delicious suggestion that I urge everyone to make their own. I’ve made these with various flavours, shapes and styles of dumplings with success, but find pot stickers are the hardiest, and therefore, best to toss around. But substitute away… it’s all good. One day I’ll be super smug and use homemade dumplings (I went to a funky class months ago, and so far have done nothing with that experience), but I’m absolutely not above throwing in some good quality frozen pieces.

This meal serves 4, and is about 350 calories per serve. Of course, that’s hard to gauge when you change everything each time, but if you stick to the spirit of the recipe, it’s a safe bet.

Ingredients

1.5 tbs peanut oil

400g dumplings of your choice – I’m partial to prawn or pork

100ml water

1 onion, thinly sliced

200g mushrooms, sliced

1 small handful of baby capsicum, sliced (or 1 regular pepper)

4 heirloom carrots, peeled and cut into matchsticks

1 small head broccoli or 3 bunches broccolini, cut florets and stalks thinly sliced

100g beans or snow peas, trimmed

400g can baby corn, drained

3 cloves garlic, minced

1tsp minced ginger

1/4 cup oyster sauce

2tbs sweet chilli sauce

1/4 cup Shaoxing wine

Large handful baby spinach

Method

You’ll want everything ready to go before you start. Chop all vegetables and place in one large bowl. Combine oyster sauce, sweet chilli sauce and Shaoxing wine in a jug and set aside.
In a large frypan with a lid, heat 1tbs oil over medium heat. Add dumplings and cook one side without turning or stirring. Carefully pour water into pan (it will sizzle like mad… I often turn the heat down to low because it freaks me out a little), cover with lid and steam for 5 minutes. Transfer to a plate with slotted spoon and keep warm (this is a quick method – throwing a clean teatowel over it should do the trick).
Heat remaining oil in a hot wok (you can use a frypan, in fact I have most of the times I’ve cooked this, but since getting one recently, I cannot recommend a wok highly enough!) and add all the vegetables, ginger and garlic. Stir constantly for about 5 minutes, until veggies are tender but not mushy.
Pour the sauce over the veggies and give a good stir.
Add the spinach and dumplings and turn gently until the dumplings are coated with sauce and the spinach is wilted.

Winter Vegetable Soup with Parmesan and Spinach Dumplings

It’s finally cooling down, which means I can pull out my beloved red cast iron pot and whip out the comfort food recipes to help warm me up. Seriously, people joked that I would feel the cold after losing all the weight. They weren’t wrong. Last winter was miserable – I was ALWAYS cold and found it difficult to warm up. I’m hoping this winter, I will be more acclimated and less uncomfortable, despite being slightly smaller again.

It has to be said, that during the Winter months, I sometimes miss some of the heavier stews and casseroles that are suprisingly high in calories despite feeling like a wholesome bowl of goodness. Of course, rather than throwing in the towel and giving in to temptation, I’ve turned to searching for lighter, but equally comforting – recipes to fill the void. Some of them have been sad failures – watery, lame slop with little flavour and no texture. Some – like this awesome “stoup” (soup so thick that it’s almost a stew) adapted once again from Taste – bring joy to my cold self. It’s only 423 calories, and fills the cravings for veggies, bread, cheese and potatoes, making it the perfect winter staple. And unlike many winter warmers, it doesn’t take hours and hours… it’s done in less than an hour. Just to add one more tick to the boxes, this soup is also vegetarian if you use the correct parmesan.

Serves 6

Ingredients

dumplings

large handful baby spinach, shredded

1 1/2 cups flour

2tbs butter, melted and cooled

1/2 cup parmesan cheese

2/3 cup milk

Soup

2-3 second spray oil

1 brown onion, diced

1tsp minced garlic

1tsp minced ginger

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp paprika

1 tsp dried sage

2 carrots, diced

1 bulb fennel, diced

1 medium potato, diced

2 parsnips, diced

400g tinned tomatoes

4 cups vegetable stock

500g pumpkin, diced

Method

1. Combine spinach flour in a mixing bowl and make a well in the centre. In a jug, combine the rest of the dumpling ingredients and pour into the well. Mix gently until well combined. Roll into 15 balls and place on a clean, dry plate.

2. In a large saucepan, heat the oil and sweat onions over medium heat until translucent. Add nutmeg and paprika, stirring for 30 seconds until fragrant.

3. Tip in all vegetables except for the pumpkin and stir to coat with the spices. Add tomatoes and stock, using the stock to clean out the tomato tin. Cook, covered, for 10 minutes, until starting to soften. Stir every few minutes to prevent veggies from catching. Add pumpkin, and cook, covered, for a further 5 minutes, still stirring periodically.

4. Gently place the dumplings atop of the soup and lower the heat to medium-low. Cover again, and cook for 20 minutes, until the dumplings are cooked through. Serve garnished with fennel fronds.