PHOTOS BY ANGELINA MARIE, SHORT EARED DOG PHOTOGRAPHY
Is there a food more appealing than a soft, warm dumpling? We’ve enjoyed them in a variety of ways—wrapped, rolled, pinched, plopped into broth—yet they always capture us with pillowy, savory comfort.
For this issue, we asked three local chefs to introduce us to their favorite form of dumplings, each bringing their own unique flavors and techniques to this traditional food. From delicate gyoza to Italian gnudi to simmering Southern chicken and dumplings, they guide us through this culinary tradition one bite at a time.
Japanese Gyoza: Livia Woodburn
Popular at most local Asian restaurants, these snacks or side dishes surround a savory pork filling with thin wrappers. You’ll find them at Thai restaurants and sushi places alike, but most records indicate gyoza are a smaller adaptation of larger Chinese jiaozi, or potstickers. 
“The origin is unclear,” says Livia Woodburn, but legend has it that a high-ranking chef in China’s imperial court once left dumplings on the stove for too long. The dumplings ended up with a crispy bottom. “Instead of throwing them out, he served them to the guests.”
Woodburn is something of a high-ranking chef herself. She operates the Amarillo National Bank Executive Dining Room, and is the proprietor of the beloved Pan-Handlers Cafe in the basement of ANB’s Plaza One building. Why gyoza? “Because I love Asian food,” she says. “I’m half-Mexican and I love Mexican food, but I think I could eat Asian every day.” Her recipe comes from a family friend.
To start, many recipes call for using a meat grinder for the ground pork, but Woodburn prefers a food processor. “That way, it’s not too lean. It’s a better texture,” she says. Some purists make the dough by hand, but Woodburn says there’s no shame in using pre-made gyoza wrappers, which can be purchased locally at Dong Phuong Oriental Market on East Amarillo Boulevard. “That’s the only place we’ve found them. They’re in the freezer,” she says. “You have to know where to look, or ask someone.”
After filling the wrappers—be careful not to overfill, she says—wet the edges and seal each one with a dumpling maker tool.
From that point, each gyoza is cooked using a distinctive two-step process. First, they’re pan fried in a nonstick skillet to achieve a crispy, carmelized bottom. Then, using a tight-fitting lid, the gyoza are steamed for several more minutes. You can steam with water, but Woodburn prefers broth. “It really intensifies the little crust that comes out if you use broth,” she says. “And it smells good.”
V’s Best Potstickers
1 pound fresh-ground pork, not all lean
2 green onions, chopped
1 teaspoon freshly grated ginger
½ teaspoon ground white pepper
2 cloves garlic, crushed
½ can water chestnuts, chopped very coarsely
1 small shallot, chopped
2 cups napa cabbage, chopped
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons rice wine
1 teaspoon fish sauce
2 tablespoons sesame oil
1 egg
1 tablespoon cornstarch
Gyoza wrappers
Chicken stock or water
Combine green onions, ginger, garlic, water chestnuts, shallot and cabbage in a food processor and puree. Combine ground pork, onion mixture, salt, sugar, soy sauce, rice wine, fish sauce, sesame oil, egg and cornstarch. Mix with hands until fully combined.
Work with one wrapper at a time, and keep the rest covered with a damp towel. Set wrapper on open dumpling press. Spoon about a teaspoon of filling in the center (if you try to use more, the wrappers won’t seal right or may tear). With dampened fingers, wet the edges. Fold wrapper in half over filing, making sure the ends meet and filling is centered; press edges down firmly to seal. Tap the pot sticker on the work surface to flatten it, then add a slight curve so it can stand on its own. Transfer to a plate; cover with a damp towel to keep moist. Repeat with remaining wrappers and filling (Refrigerate leftover filling up to 2 days).
In a 12-inch, nonstick skillet with a tight-fitting lid, heat 1 tablespoon oil over medium-high heat. Pan-fry pot stickers until golden brown. Add broth or water and steam for 3 minutes. Uncover and continue to pan-fry until water has evaporated and the pot stickers are crunchy. Repeat with remaining tablespoon oil and potstickers. Serve with soy sauce or your favorite dipping sauce.
Makes 24 potstickers
Potsticker Sauce
½ cup soy sauce
1 teaspoon rice vinegar, or Chinese vinegar
1 teaspoon sesame oil
2 tablespoons sugar, or honey to taste
1 to 2 tablespoons lime juice
A squirt or two of Sriracha (optional)
1 tablespoon green onions, sliced
Crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
Sesame seeds, for garnish
Combine soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil and sugar in small bowl and whisk until well combined and sugar has dissolved. Add Sriracha, if desired. Stir in sliced green onion, then garnish with red pepper flakes and sesame seeds. Whisk well before serving. Serve as a dipping sauce for potstickers, egg rolls, gyoza or wontons.
Italian Gnudi: Aaron Adamson
Pressed to come up with an Italian dumpling, most people would suggest the potato-based gnocchi. Aaron Adamson prefers something a little richer and more elegant: gnudi. The word means “naked” in Italian—the g is silent—and refers to this ricotta-cheese-and-flour combination, which is a little like a ravioli without the surrounding pasta skin.
“To my understanding, the dish goes back to Tuscany in the Renaissance era,” says Adamson, a veteran of local, high-end restaurants, who now serves as executive sous chef at Amarillo Country Club. “Because we’re just making that filling and dropping it in water, it’s more of a true dumpling.”
Critical to gnudi is preparing the dough and then letting it rest for at least an hour—even up to 24 hours. “It’s a chemistry thing,” he explains. “The flour becomes one with the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients. You can tell the difference in the textures and taste.”
Pasta can be springy and bouncy, he says, but gnudi is more delicate. Once the dumplings have rested, boil them until they float to the surface. “It should have a nice, really palatable texture” served with a simple brown butter sauce. The minimal use of flour gives it a creamy, melt-in-your-mouth consistency.
Gnudi can also be served with toppings to add to its texture, including toasted pine nuts, crispy shallots or bacon crumbles. Adamson prefers fried sage. “It’s just something crispy that makes it rich and gives it some savory qualities,” he says. To prepare this, he heats up oil then drops in the sage leaves, stirring them for about 20 seconds, then letting the oil absorb into a paper towel. Garnish with plenty of fresh Parmesan.
Asian gyoza may be more of a side dish, but Adamson wants the gnudi front and center. “I think it should be the main course, but if you were being fancy and had multiple courses, the pasta course would always come before the main,” he says.
Gnudi alla Fiorentina
(Spinach and Ricotta Dumplings with Brown Butter and Sage)
The gnudi dough must be made and chilled for at least 1 hour,
or up to 24 hours.
1 pound fresh spinach
2 ½ cups whipped ricotta
2 egg yolks
1 ¾ cups finely grated Pecorino Romano
1 lemon peel, finely chopped
½ teaspoon salt
5 dashes nutmeg
¾ cup double zero flour
5 egg whites
Bring pot of salted water to low boil. Blanch spinach, and then shock in ice water. Wring spinach out with a kitchen towel. Do this a few times to get as much water out as possible. Finely chop spinach. Whip ricotta until smooth in a food processor. Combine chopped spinach, ricotta, yolks, Pecorino, lemon peel, salt and nutmeg. Once combined, fold in flour. Whip egg whites to stiff peaks, fold into dough, cover, and chill for at least an hour or overnight.
Flour a work surface, dust your hands, and using a small ice cream scoop, form gnudi into chestnut-sized rounds; place on parchment that is dusted with flour, cover and refrigerate.
For the dish:
Salted boilin water
½ cup butter, cubed
Fresh sage
Toasted pine nuts
Pecorino Romano
Nutmeg
Fresh lemon Zest
Gently lower gnudi into salted boiling water. In a sauté pan, melt butter until frothy and brown, then toss in sage. Once gnudi are floating, cook for 1 minute and remove with a slotted spoon. Place gnudi in a bowl and top with sage brown butter. Grate lots of pecorino and nutmeg—top with toasted pine nuts, lemon zest
and enjoy.
Traditional Chicken and Dumplings: Tremaine Brown
Dumplings, Tremaine Brown says, started out as a way for poor people to make soup more substantial. “It’s really a poor man’s meal,” says the community activist and proprietor of Shi Lee’s Barbecue and Soul Food Cafe. Combining flour and water can turn a simple broth into something much more filling. “If you’ve got some kind of chicken broth, a chicken soup, then you can create a meal that will fill you up. That’s all it really was—getting that dough expanding inside you and saying, ‘Hey. You’re full now.’”
That’s how most comfort foods begin. They fill us up and make us feel safe, and that’s when they start to carry nostalgia and a sense of well-being—positive emotions that attach to certain recipes, flavors and aromas.
Chicken and dumplings is one of those meals, and Brown views it as a comfort food that can remain very simple or become elevated. “If you grew to love this kind of meal but then [found yourself] in a better place financially, you can make it as hardy as you want to make it,” he says. You can start with a simple recipe of broth, chicken and dough, then add to it endlessly: potatoes, mushrooms, celery, carrots, even rice. “It almost turns into a chowder,” Brown says. “And it’s really good.”
He shared with us one of his recipes for chicken and dumplings—which is typically on the menu at Shi Lee’s during the cold months. It’s endlessly customizable. It can be prepared very quickly or it can be done the slow way. One of those modifications involves the dumplings themselves. “My mom doesn’t like doughy things,” he says of Shi Lee, his fellow operator at the restaurant. Instead of traditional dumplings, Shi Lee will cut up fluffy flour tortillas from Lupita’s or Fiesta Foods, adding those to the broth. Tremaine has a different time-saving technique. “Of course, the easy way of making these dumplings is getting a can of those buttery, flaky Grands! biscuits [from Pillsbury],” Brown says. “Cut them into fours and shape them so they look like little snowballs.”
For the protein, he says a simmering combination of chicken broth with chicken breasts or thighs—or even a pulled apart rotisserie chicken—makes for a rich soup. When cooking for larger groups, he’ll even add cans of Campbell’s cream soups, like cream of chicken, cream of mushroom, and cream of celery.
“You can make it as hard or as easy as you want,” he says. To his credit, he provided us with both options. Whether you’re making your own dough or cutting canned biscuits—or adding fresh vegetables and toppings to it—the result is delicious and substantial. “There’s just an array of options to increase the heartiness, increase the symphony of flavors,” Brown says.
Chicken and Dumplings
Start with meat
1 pound cooked boneless chicken meat (or 1 store-bought rotisserie chicken, deboned)
Raw chicken should be cooked thoroughly in about 6 cups boiling water; save and strain resulting broth to use for soup.
As this meal originated as a poor man’s meal, a lot of the ingredients are optional. The recipe varies with whatever ingredients one might have on hand.
Making the dumplings
Flour
Salt
Baking powder
Milk
Flaked butter
Whisk together flour, baking powder and a pinch of salt. Using a cheese grater, grate butter to fold into batter with milk. Stir to a fluffy consistency so dumplings will hold their shape. Set aside.
Making the soup
Combine chicken broth (either from cooked chicken or store-bought), condensed cream of chicken soup, condensed cream of celery soup, condensed cream of mushroom soup, salt, pepper, onions, celery, carrots, mushrooms, potatoes and any other array of green vegetables like peas, broccoli or green beans. The list could go on and on.
Saute vegetables with butter and salt and pepper. If you have a favorite soup seasoning, by all means, use it. Sauteing the vegetables locks in those seasonings and creates a more flavorful soup.
Add sauteed vegetables to chicken broth with shredded, cooked chicken and heat to simmering. Add in the condensed soups, 1 (10.5-ounce) can at a time, until desired thickness is achieved. Stir often. Add dumplings shaped into small balls into the simmering, hot soup. Dumplings will float and need to be flipped over and over. The dumplings will puff up, and flipping them constantly will ensure that they are cooked thoroughly. You want a dumpling to be fluffy and airy, not doughy. Simmer and stir until vegetables like potatoes or broccoli are fork tender. Enjoy!
Optional Ingredients
Soft and fluffy tortillas (cut into strips or torn into pieces) or Grands! Buttery biscuits (cut into fourths and shaped) can substitute for dumplings.
Add toppings for texture and flavor
Shredded Carrots
Grated cheddar cheese
Crispy fried jalapeno salad toppers
Crispy fried onion salad toppers
Makes 4 servings
