Chicken Scallopine Piccata with Caper Berries

October 24, 2021

The first time I had this lemony rich version of chicken piccata, I fell in love with Cerignola olives and caper berries. We had just eaten at the now closed Lidia's Pittsburgh, and I immediately bought Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen. Making this dish at home is even more satisfying. It is a surprisingly easy way to get a kid- and nanny-pleasing meal on the table! And its rich flavors & do ahead ease with a quick finish make for a great, visually pleasing meal for guests as well.

Gluten-free chicken scallopine piccata

At its simplest, chicken piccata is flavored with lemon, capers, butter and maybe some wine. This is the most robustly delicious version I have ever tried, and it is rather easy to make.

I did not expect that the strong flavors in this dish would appeal to so many -- from young children to a nanny that likes plain hamburgers with all the toppings removed. I started off making the dish simply because I loved it, expecting perhaps some complaints because pickled items with a strong flavor often do not appeal to kids. But these flavors marry so well with the rich lemon and briny olive notes (x3) perfectly counterbalanced against the soothing buttery olive oil, all carried to the mouth by extremely tender chicken.

After browning the scallopini, a pan sauce is made. To finish the dish, rewarm the chicken in the sauce and top with parsley.

The true secrets to this dish are the lemon slices fried in butter and olive oil and the large buttery Cerignola olives. Pounding the chicken into thin slices means they cook very quickly are stay amazingly tender. And of course, the caper berries add another level of excitement. Although the recipe says to remove the lemon slices along with the garlic, I think they look beautiful and have caught people fighting over who gets to eat them!

The Restaurant

There are lots of chicken piccatas out there. But the lemon-butter-caper sauce of versions I had tried growing up came across as rather pedestrian and bland, weighed down by excess breading, despite the promise of those three ingredients. Everything changed for me when my husband and I dined at Lidia's Pittsburgh for the first time about 20 years ago. Lidia Bastianich is a popular PBS cooking star, and it was exciting to discover her newly opened restaurant in the Steel City.

Lidia's on May 21, 2019. This would have been my last time eating here before they closed in Sept. 2019, but unfortunately the broken water main down the road took out their water.

This sublime dish is simply entitled Pollo al Limone on the menu, consisting of chicken breast, roasted lemon, capers, Cerignola olives and served with a side of velvety spinach. The flavors were bold - briny, lemony and rich. And the mound of bright green spinach was truly velvety, complementing the chicken perfectly.

There were three different sources of green-olive-like flavor: the sliced olives, tiny round capers with lemony floral overtones, and occasional rich bites of something else...

Flavor bombs: garlic, olives, caper berries, capers, lemon, dry white wine

When we first enjoyed the dish, we noted some stemmed, olive green, teardrop-shaped fruits that were full of tiny, edible seeds in addition to the usual small round capers. We inquired with the waiter, who informed us that they were caper berries. While capers represent the unopened flower bud, caper berries are formed from the fertilized fruit of the caper plant.

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Cookbooks

Eggplant Parmesan Stacks & Other Vegetarian Challenge Favorites

February 28, 2021

Today is Vegetaruary Day 28, the last day of a Vegetarian February Challenge issued by our daughter. And we celebrated with a light lunch of muffin tin eggplant parmesan stacks. It has been a fun adventure trying out new recipes and revisiting old favorites. Early on, we relied more heavily on cheese, but as our cooking vista expanded, we found ourselves eating vegan dishes more and more frequently. Among the new discoveries are a super easy, super fast browned butter radish couscous, tofu sofritas tacos, and a hearty two-bean loaf with homemade tomato jam. We also enjoyed standbys such as silken tofu spinach soup with Sichuan chili crisp (instead of prosciutto bits), vegetarian spring rolls, vegetarian chili and a spiced lentil curry topped with yogurt. Although the challenge is over, I suspect we will be eating similarly on most days going forward. There are so many more recipes we want to try!

Eggplant Parmesan Stacks

Last year, we tried a 15 day vegetarian challenge, and were foiled by work dinners and (not so) hidden ingredients in oyster sauce. But as the pandemic shutdown progressed, with more time in the kitchen and no traveling, we discovered some incredible vegetarian dishes from the likes of Gordon Ramsay, Yotam Ottolenghi, Grace Young and Melissa Clark.

So when 2021 came along, my daughter decided to double the challenge by selecting the entire month of February, the shortest month of the year. We were much better prepared this time! A side benefit is that after only two weeks of vegetarian eating, my cholesterol and LDL levels normalized and my doctor called to say that I did not need to start statins after all. Plus, I easily dropped the weight I had been trying to lose for the past 3-4 years, without even noticing. More importantly, we enjoyed a variety of delicious meals, expanding our cooking repertoire. Listed below are about a dozen of our favorites!

Eggplant Parmesan Stacks

This is my second time making individual Eggplant Parmesan entrees from the Muffin Tin Chef cookbook by Matt Kadey. His technique of oven baking the breaded parmesan slices results in a completely non-greasy dish where the sauce, cheese and eggplant melds into rich, satisfying stacks. I also like the addition of broccoli rabe (although I used regular broccoli). Best of all, as with many of my Asian eggplant recipes, there is no time-consuming and messy salting of the eggplant slices required.

🐾 Next time, I might skip the muffin tin, and try arranging the eggplant slices as little stacks in a 9 x 13 inch pan. Jump to the recipe for Eggplant Parmesan Stacks.

Spiced Braised Lentils, a Food52 Genius Recipe (vegan-friendly)

This Melissa Clark recipe infuses lentils with all the flavor of a good Madras curry powder, with tantalizing toppings of crunchy mustard seeds on creamy white yogurt. The satisfying bites of rich lentils play well against the contrast of textures in the toppings. Not having unsweetened coconut flakes, I substituted toasted bread crumbs the first time I made this, and then tried smoky wok-crisped mushrooms the second time.

Try using lentils of different colors. Here I have a combination of brown and red lentils with some split peas. It's also a great recipe to use up zucchini squash and other vegetables.

For vegans, simply omit or substitute soy yogurt for the topping. It is truly deserving of a place in the Genius Recipes category.

Hot and Sour Soup (vegan-friendly)

We love this warm and cozy soup, which uses pantry staples to create a rich and hearty sensory experience. In another post, I covered my odyssey of trying multiple recipes for hot and sour soup to arrive at the perfect texture and flavor. In the process, we decided that we liked the soup better vegetarian as the pork slivers could end up tough and did not add much in the way of flavor. The best part of this recipe is that it relies heavily on dried mushrooms and long-storing pantry staples such as eggs and tofu.

For vegans, omit the egg -- which adds pretty yellow streaks but is not necessary. The luscious flavor comes primarily from the vinegar and white pepper, and the tofu and mushrooms offer plenty of protein.

Bean Loaves with Tomato Jam (vegan)

This was another recipe from The Muffin Tin Chef cookbook. The homemade tomato jam made from red Roma tomatoes was fabulous (next time double or even triple the jam)! The mixture of garbanzo beans (chickpeas), pinto beans, pecans (I did not have sunflower seeds) and the seasonings yielded a very meaty aroma and appearance. My husband thought I was making beef stew when he walked in the door!

I did not have a whole onion, so the mixture ended up on the dry side. I tried to compensate by adding half a red bell pepper, but in retrospect I should have mixed in some oil, broth or even egg to help bind it together. Nevertheless, this is definitely a keeper and may even form the basis of a new veggie burger!

Vegetable Spring Rolls and Celebration Rice Cake (vegan)

When my daughter picked February for the challenge month, it seemed reasonable given that it is the shortest month. What I did not realize, however, was that the lunar New Year and Lantern Festivals both fell in February. Grace Young and Yotam Ottolenghi to the rescue!

Grace has a wonderful vegetable spring roll recipe in The Breath of a Wok, as well as a delicious char siu (Chinese bbq pork version) in Wisdom of a Chinese Kitchen. Back in 2020, I had made both of these, even making my own spring roll wrappers out of flour and water as I was trying to minimize trips to the store. Click here to read about how easy it is to make spring rolls, whether you prefer yours to be deep-fried, air-fried or even non-fried!

And I had previously modified Yotam Ottolenghi's savory vegan celebration rice cake to include dried Chinese mushrooms and other "treasures" available to me in a nod to the Eight-treasure sweet sticky rice cakes traditionally served for the Spring Festival. So I pulled out my Instant Pot Bundt Cake pan and made another wreath-like sticky rice cake with a rich, enticing mushroom gravy moat.

Savory Sticky Rice Celebration Bundt Cake

🐾 My tip for this dish is to soak the glutinous rice for at least 8 h as I did the first time I made this, as some of the rice on top did not get as soft and sticky as I would have liked in this version.

Silken Tofu and Spinach Soup (vegan)

This is one of my all time favorite tofu dishes. Indeed, the luscious soup base with tiny white cubes of tofu set off against emerald green spinach and garnished with a sprinkle of prosciutto is one of my suggested entry dishes for people that believe they could never like tofu. The original soup recipe from Fuchsia Dunlop's Land of Fish and Rice had pork in it, but I had modified it to our tastes. Click here for the recipe.

Silken tofu with spinach soup - vegan version garnished with Sichuan Chili Crisp

Hot and sour soup with cubes of clean-out-the-fridge zucchini.

To make this into a vegan dish, I substituted vegetable broth for chicken broth and omitted the crispy bits of proscuitto that I used as a garnish. While tasty, it was lacking a bit of umami oomph. The solution was this amazing vegan condiment called Sichuan Chili Crisp by FlybyJing, featuring lots of fantastic ingredients including fermented black beans, red chilis, garlic, sesame oil and Sichuan peppers. A drizzle of Sichuan Chili Crisp raised this fantastic soup to the sublime level.

Brown Butter Couscous with Spring Vegetables

This recipe by "EmilyC" on the Food52 site is a true winner! As I put in my review, "Fantastic, quick and easy! This is a great weekday meal with wonderful flavors, colors and textures. Will definitely be used a lot. I kept the radish greens and added them with the spinach. It all disappeared with no leftovers."

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Cookbooks

Riffing the Cauliflower Steak: Restaurant Cooking at Home

October 25, 2020

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BBQ

Char siu 叉燒 Chinese Barbecue Pork: One Pork Shoulder, Many Meals

June 06, 2020

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Cookbooks

Celebrating African-American Cookbook Authors

June 03, 2020

It has been stated that America is not so much as a melting pot of cultures, but rather a stew pot, where ingredients meld together to create a greater whole, but individual characteristics remain. From the very earliest days of our nation, our culinary traditions have been enriched by the melding of African and Caribbean influences with European and Native American cooking. Southern cuisine was not the only beneficiary of this rich African-American heritage, but also the pepper pot stew popular in Philadelphia, rumored to have sustained the Revolutionary Army at Valley Forge. This wonderful cultural exchange continues to this day, and some of my favorite stir-fries from the Chinese diaspora feature African-Caribbean spices and flavors. Yet the invaluable contribution made by African-American cooks to our culture and enjoyment of life has remained in the background, often invisible, instead of receiving the widespread recognition and honor that it deserves.

African-American Cookbooks to Explore

A recent Eat Your Books post features six gorgeous contemporary cookbooks written by African-American authors. Among these are Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking by Toni Tipton-Martin, which won the 2020 James Beard award for Best American Cookbook.

In her previous book, The Jemima Code, Toni Tipton-Martin highlighted numerous historical books by African-American authors, as reviewed in this post. Among them is a self-published cookbook by Malinda Russell, which is the earliest known African-American cookbook to be published. This historical book is available digitally for free, as part of the Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive at the University of Michigan.

Malinda Russell's book starts off with an introduction to her history (her grandmother was a freed slave), and why she is writing a cookbook in Paw Paw, Michigan -- far from her home in Tennessee. These few pages along are well worth reading, even if you have no desire to recreate old recipes. As a testament to her strength, you can see how many careers she has pursued, raising her handicapped son on her own after her husband died young. She has had all her savings robbed at least twice, picking herself up each time with indomitable strength.

In 1864, Russell left her boarding house and pastry shop businesses in Cold Springs TN to seek safety during the Civil War. "Hearing that Michigan was the Garden of the West, I resolved to make that my home...until peace is restored," writing the cookbook in hopes of raising enough money to get back to Tennessee. "I have made Cooking my employment for the last twenty years, in the first families of Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina and Kentucky. I know my Receipts to be good, as they have always given satisfaction... and as I am now advanced in years, with no other means of support than my own labor; I have put out this book with the intention of benefiting the public as well as myself."

As might be expected from a pastry chef, her cookbook starts off with all manner of cakes. There are also fascinating glimpses into pickled peaches, and multiple preparations of meat and milk that allow them to be stored well, presumably at room temperature. The book ends with recipes for personal care items that might have been used in place of toothpaste, shampoo and hair dye.

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BBQ

Easy, Gourmet Stuffed Burgers: Beef and Vegetarian

May 31, 2020

As the weather warms up, there is nothing more satisfying than grilling burgers to be served with a variety of grilled, pickled or fresh vegetables. Years ago, I started making a cheese and bacon stuffed burger, which became the only burger my kids liked to eat. Efforts to create vegetarian burgers typically resulted in tasty, but fragile patties that squished out from between the buns. Inspired by Green Burgers by Martin Nordin and the minimalistbaker.com website, yet lacking ingredients due to the pandemic lockdown, I created a delicious bbq veggie burger -- hardy enough to grill alongside my traditional stuffed hamburgers.

Beef burger stuffed with bacon and white cheddar

Veggie walnut-brown rice-pea burger, topped with mushroom crisps, greens and flowering chives

Jump to the Stuffed Beef Burger Recipe.

Jump to the Walnut-Rice-Pea Burger Recipe.
Jump to gallery of Favorite Restaurant Burgers
Jump to Exploring Vegetarian Burgers

Easy Burgers for Home or Camping

What can be more classic than a burger with lettuce, tomato and onion? Yet, hamburgers were not a major part of my childhood. Even on the rare trips to McDonald's, my parents favored Filet-O-Fish® sandwiches paired with the iconic thin-cut tallow french fries that, sadly, no longer exist. It was not until a beach camping trip on Hammocks Beach State Park with friends that I learned how to make my first burger. The ground beef was simply seasoned with a pack of Lipton's Onion Soup and Dip mix, and placed on the grill with cheddar cheese melted on top. Sublime... with the ocean breeze, white sandy dunes and soothing rhythm of the waves.

Bacon-Cheese Stuffed Beef Burgers

Years later, when my son was 10 and my daughter was 5, I started making a cheese and bacon stuffed burger, which became the only burger my kids liked to eat. I got the general idea from a Williams-Sonoma recipe card for Burgers Stuffed with Blue Cheese and Bacon, which involved fussy onion caramelization, excess salt and proprietary seasonings, all of which I omitted.

The procedure involves forming balls out of the meat. Like making a clay pinch-pot, push into the ball with your thumbs and pinch out the sides to make a cavity large enough to hold the bacon and cheese. Pull the edges together and pinch closed around the filling.

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Cookbooks

Pork Slivers and Vegetables in Black Bean Sauce over Double-Gold Chow Mein Noodle Cakes: One Pork Shoulder, Many Meals

May 05, 2020

In the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown, I was lucky enough to get a 10-pound pork shoulder, cut in half, from a local farm that normally supplies several sustainable area restaurants. The inaugural meal from this shoulder, delectably tender strips of pork stir-fried with zucchini and purple carrot, crowned my family recipe for crispy-on-the-outside, tender-in-the-middle Suzhou-style chow mein noodle cakes.

Shortcut to the Love2Chow recipe.

Shortcut to the gallery of dishes: "One Pork Shoulder, Many Meals",

The stay-at-home lockdown orders has certainly changed the way I cook. First, I was lucky enough to be able to stock up on fresh chicken, pork and even a bit of bacon from Goodness Grows Farm, along with lots of fresh or salted/fermented/dried vegetables, noodles and rice from the Chinese market. Secondly, my daughter challenged us to two weeks of vegetarian cooking. Had to start over a few times after realizing that just because it's tofu doesn't mean it's vegetarian (fish sauce, oyster sauce, Worchestershire sauce). Thirdly, online MasterClass with Gordon Ramsay. While I have always loved mushrooms, I did not ever expect that I could cook them in a way that makes them taste like bacon. And the ones that are starting to dry out in the paper bag in the fridge have a head start. Plus, the way he uses every scrap of food ("I see it as another portion", "all the flavor's in the peel") and raves about the cooking liquids most people would discard ("you simply cannot buy this kind of flavor"). That and becoming Instagram friends with the @foodwastefeast sisters (after meeting Irene at Boston's MeiMei on our trip to cart my daughter home from college) has completely legitimized my tendency for saving all sorts of scraps and cooking juices for reuse in other dishes.

Before I knew it, 6 weeks had gone by and I had not even touched the $60 worth of meat that I bought when the lockdown began. This past weekend, I thawed one of the pork shoulder halves, cutting off 14 ounces to use in a stir-fry while the rest of the shoulder was still mostly frozen. It's easier to slice meat when it is partially frozen, and once sliced, it thaws very quickly in marinade.

The front piece of this 5 pound half-shoulder yielded 14 oz after trimming off the thicker areas of fat.

I planned to use this stir-fry to serve on top of Suzhou-style double gold panfried noodle cakes. Ever since I posted my family recipe for this, my sister has been going through boxes of Quon Yick noodles, which she kindly shipped to me from California. She had been pairing it with all sorts of delectable creations of her own -- tomatoes, mushrooms, ground lamb or shredded pork with snow peas and bamboo -- and posting the photos on Facebook.

My dad always served this with a pork, cabbage, bean sprouts stirfry, as the soft centers of the noodle cakes soak up the sauce even as the golden outer crusts remain crisp and crunchy. This give rise to a delectable eating experience: something that neither deep fried ultra thin egg noodles nor oil-tossed lo mein noodles can do. I, however, had pretty slim pickings for vegetables -- I had used up all the broccoli, cauliflower, leafy green beet tops, the rest of the cabbage, all of the mushrooms, baby bok choy, spinach. So inspired by the photo of Helen Chen's pork and cucumber stir-fry in Breath of a Wok by Grace Young, I figured I could at least make the zucchini look like cucumber slices.

Marinating pork, sliced zucchini, purple carrot and garlic, rinsed and smashed Chinese fermented black beans.

I cooked the noodle cakes first. While my Dad always cooked one huge noodle cake, flipping the entire stainless steel pan up in the air, I found that individual sized noodle cakes could easily be flipped with a regular spatula, once the bottom had crisped up. The trick is to not peek too early, which causes the fragile early crispy layers to flake off the noodle and stay stuck to the pan.

I was completely floored by how delicious the stir-fry came out. The pork was unbelievably tender -- I've made lots of pork stir-fries over the years but the flavor and texture was truly superior even in just an ad hoc stir-fry using ingredients at hand. I now get what Michael Pollan said, that once you have tasted "better-raised" meats, it actually makes you want to eat meat less often. When the pandemic is over, I will no longer be buying grocery store meats raised in factory farms. Not sure why it took me so long, given that my kids had long been able to recognize when the chicken that I cooked came from the local farm instead of the supermarket...

After dinner, the shoulder was thawed enough to be broken down. The majority of the meat was cut into 1 inch thick strips and marinated overnight to make Chinese barbecue pork - another Grace Young recipe, this time from Stir-frying to the Sky's Edge. I was not too concerned with getting everything off the bone, as that would be frozen to make future homemade ramen. The fat trimmed from the meat was rendered slowly with the assistance of some water to make tasty cracklings, which we immediately ate before I could take any photos, and lard, frozen for future pastries.

Click here to view the gallery of dishes: "One Pork Shoulder, Many Meals", which will be updated as the rest of this shoulder is used.

Love2Chow Pork Slivers & Vegetables in Black Bean Sauce

12-14 oz pork (butt, country ribs, chops), cut into ¼-inch matchsticks

½ Tbs. Shaoxing rice wine or dry sherry

½ tsp. coarse salt

½ tsp. toasted Asian sesame oil

½ tsp. soy sauce

2 tsp. cornstarch or potato starch

1 Tbs. neutral oil (safflower, sunflower, canola, corn, peanut)

3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

1 Tbs. fermented Chinese black (soy)beans, rinsed, drained and smashed with a spoon

Optional: 1 square of baked five-spice dry tofu 五香豆腐乾, sliced thinly OR 3-4 dried shiitake caps, rehydrated, sliced into ¼ inch strips

1.5-2 cups of sliced vegetables

For example:

¼ head of cabbage, shredded

OR ½ medium zucchini (sliced lengthwise and then into angled ¼-inch slices) or one carrot sliced into angled 1/8-1/4 inch slices

OR 1 red or orange bell pepper cut into ¼ inch wide strips

OR bean sprouts and scallions/Chinese chives 韭菜

3 Tbs. water

¼ tsp. sugar

1. Marinate pork slices in rice wine, salt, sesame oil, soy sauce and starch.

2. Heat a 14-inch wok or a 12 inch frying pan over medium high heat until a drop of water evaporates in about 1 second. Add 1 Tbs oil and tip pan to distribute. Arrange pork and garlic in a single layer and allow to brown undisturbed for 1 minute.

3. Add the black beans and stir. Add the optional dry tofu or mushrooms. Stir-fry until pork is about ¾ browned, with pink areas still visible. Transfer back to its marinating bowl.

4. Add another Tbs oil to the hot wok. Stir-fry the vegetables, starting with the carrot or other firm vegetables that require longer cooking. Cook until vegetables are done to your taste (take a few out and taste them).

5. Stir in pork, water and sugar for 1-2 minutes until pork is done. Serve immediately with brown rice or ladled over double-brown noodle cakes.

May 4, 2020

Note added 28 Dec 2022: Just made this again upon my daughter's request using pork, red-stem swiss chard, mushrooms, yellow pepper, and shredded cabbage-carrot mix. Absolutely delicious! See Instagram Post for more photos.

Tips:

🐾 Bring water to boil while preparing the mise en place for the stirfry. Turn it down to simmer until ready. Return to boil and cook noodles using the recipe for Double-Gold Chow Mein Noodle Cake两面黄炒麵: https://www.love2chow.com/2019/08/suzhou-double-gold-chow-mein-preserving_20.html. If you choose to make several small noodle cakes, they can easily be flipped using a regular spatula.

🐾 If serving with rice, start brown rice in the Instant Pot before beginning to prep ingredients or start white rice in a regular pot. Both will be done within the half hour needed to prepare the stir-fry.

DID YOU TRY THIS RECIPE?

Tag @love2chowblog and hashtag it #love2chow

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Cookbooks

Tortellini Primavera with Smoked Salmon & Dill

April 20, 2020

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Cookbooks

Wok with Me: Saucy Braised Tofu with Mushrooms, Scallion or Black Sesame Pancakes and Riffing the Szechuan Master Meat Mix

February 16, 2020

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Cookbooks

Making Fish Dumplings for a Pre-Chinese New Year Send-off

January 25, 2020

While many people know about the fabulous Shanghai-style soup dumplings 小籠包 (xiǎo lóng bāo) at the worldwide Taipei chain Din Tai Fung, their fish dumplings 魚餃 (yú jiǎo) stand out even more from the crowd. Craving these, I turned to Andrea Nguyen's recipe for Fish & Chives Dumplings just before my daughter returned to college, so she could get in both her New Year's fish and a dumpling wrapping session to usher in the Year of the Rat!

Steamed Fish & Scallion Dumplings with Scallion pancakes in the background

Dumpling wrapping as a family, eating fish, and the red packet of money 紅包 (hóng bāo) are the Chinese New Year traditions that I have tried to impart to my children. The first two stemmed from my childhood, whereas my husband and I added the red packet when our children were small.

My parents grew up in a war-torn China, fleeing their homes, country and hemisphere in search of stability, liberty and democracy. As one of the only Chinese families in a neighborhood dominated by Mexican-American and Filipino families, we did not grow up with a deep sense of tradition for celebrating either Chinese or American holidays. Thanksgiving became our favorite holiday, celebrated initially with roasted duck, and then at the kids' request, turkey roasted with the same Chinese seasonings. Ever so often, we would go watch the colorful lion and dragon dances in the Los Angeles Chinatown. And my mom always served whole fish sometime during the New Year season. The Chinese phrase for "having fish" 有魚 -- yǒu yú -- sounds the same as the words for "having surplus" 有余, signifying prosperity, abundance and the ability to share with others.

https://www.theyucatantimes.com/2020/01/chinese-new-year-2020-year-of-the-rat/

When relatives came to visit, the grown ups would sit around wrapping Chinese pork dumplings. While we liked eating them, we kids gave one or two desultory tries at wrapping leaky, deformed (criticizable) dumplings before running off to play. It was not until I got to college that I made my first dumplings at a huge New Year's event. Other Chinese-American students assumed I knew how to do it, and asked me to teach non-Asian participants. I was able to surreptitiously watch the guy next to me, and picked it up quickly enough to fake my way through the lesson. See one, do one, teach one...

That summer, I came home and asked my mom to show me how to make dumplings from scratch. She makes a pretty stiff dough, as she enjoys the toothy springiness of Northern style boiled dumplings, as opposed to the thin, unsubstantial gyoza-style wrapper that fades from the senses after conveying what are essentially meatballs to the mouth. To my surprise, it was a lot easier and less messy to wrap dumplings using the freshly made two-ingredient (flour, cold water) dough than using store bought circles that required dipping an increasingly messy, starchy finger into cups of water. And the dumplings made with fresh dough stay sealed easily throughout the boiling, pan-frying or vinegar-dipping process to deliver all the tasty juices into the mouth.

Fish Dumplings 魚餃 (yú jiǎo)

The first time I had fish dumplings was at the Din Tai Fung restaurant in Arcadia, CA, which we had visited for their Xiao Long Bao soup dumplings, so named because each dumpling contains a bit of delicious, steaming soup. I still think they have the best soup dumplings I have ever tried. The skins are always thin, translucent and bulging with rich, savory broth. But, comparably tasty (if more expensive) soup dumplings can be had in many cities around the US, in a smaller city like Pittsburgh. The best soup dumplings in Pittsburgh are served at a Taiwanese bistro, Cafe 33.

Juicy Pork Soup Dumplings or Xiao Long Bao at Din Tai Fung

While the soup dumplings are delicious, the Din Tai Fung fish dumplings were really special. Elegant, elongated dumplings zipped closed with an abundance of fine pleats, they were filled with tender, white flaky fish with a delicate, yet distinct, savory richness. What they lacked in color, they more than made up for in pleasurable flavors and texture.

Din Tai Fung Fish Dumplings with side of Seaweed & Beancurd in a Vinegar Dressing

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Chicken Scallopine Piccata with Caper Berries

The Restaurant