Making Gyoza, Part 2

Three infants and about twenty women squeezed into my kitchen for Kanako's cooking demonstration while a pair of toddlers horsed around in the family room.  Add a couple dozen more toddlers to the mix and a quintet of rather tall men and I would have started swooning with Christmas Past nostalgia.

Kanako chopped cabbage and Chinese chives while I photographed the pickled cucumbers and special Dashi soy sauce.  (Note the reflection in the extremely clean aluminum counter and splashboard.) 

Kanako grated ginger root and garlic while I admired the plastic grater contraption she found at the 100 Yen Store (and which is now happily ensconced in its new home, my utensil drawer). 

Kanako added warm water to the Chinese soup stock pellets and added it to the vegetables while I tried on my new Anpanman apron, a gift from Sunshine.  Then Kanako taught me how to wring the excess liquid from the vegetable mixture before adding the ground pork.

The filling mixture should chill in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes before assembling the gyoza but in the interest of time we just stuck it in the freezer for few minutes and called it a half hour.  With the exception of the photographer, rambunctious toddlers, and babes, everyone took turns filling and sealing the gyoza shells.  You want to flatten that lump of filling before you fold the shell, according to the more discerning participants.

Sunshine pleats a gyoza shell under Kanako's supervision

We coated a frying pan with sesame oil to brown one side of the gyoza then added liquid and covered the pan to let the little yumsters steam for a minute or two.  We removed the cover and watched the excess liquid evaporate.  Then we grabbed a spatula to transfer the gyoza to a serving platter.  But the gyoza did not want to leave the pan.  Six women tried and failed to coax those dumplings out of that pan.  The seventh woman, let's call her Paulette Bunyan, succeeded in filling the platter with gyoza scraps.

We coated a second $150 Williams-Sonoma frying pan with sesame oil and achieved the same dismal result.

Kanako hopped in her car and toodled across the base to fetch a pair of trusty Teflon-coated pans from her kitchen cabinet.  The third and fourth batches were sublime.

Two days later the Ancient Mariner greased up that Williams-Sonoma frying pan and cooked up the final batch of 25 gyoza Kanako had kindly tucked into our refrigerator.  Something tells me there's going to be a Teflon-coated pan under the Christmas tree this year.