Shrimp Potstickers 蝦鍋貼

 

Shrimp Potstickers with garlic shoots and enoki mushrooms.

 You can enclose the fillings completely or leave the ends open.

Fillings --- shrimp, garlic shoots, enoki mushrooms.

Ingredients for shrimp potstickers:

2    pk   potsticker wrappers

1    lb    shrimp

6    oz   garlic shoots (or garlic chives)

1    pk   enoki mushrooms (7 oz)

1    lg    egg white (keep the yolk for later)

Seasonings:

Kosher salt

Ground white  pepper

Sesame oil (opt)

1.  Wash and clean shrimp, pat dry with paper towels, then coarsely cut shrimp into small pieces.

2.  Marinade shrimp with salt, pepper and egg white, add few drops of sesame oil if using, mix thoroughly, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate 30 minutes or longer to firm up the shrimp so it would not be too soggy.

3.  Coarsely cut garlic shoots and enoki mushrooms.

4.  In a large mixing bowl combine all ingredients together including the egg yolk, toss and mix everything together.

5.  Put about 1 tbsp of filling into the middle of potsticker wrapper, fold into half and seal edges with egg white. 

6.  Pan fry the potstickers in a non-stick frying pan with some water, cover with lid, cook at medium low heat until all of the water has been absorbed.  In case there are some water left in the pan, remove the cover, turn up heat until all of the water evaporated and the potstickers are crispy brown at the bottom.

Serve warm with your favorite dipping sauce.  I simply mix together some light color soy sauce with few drops of malted rice vinegar (or balsamic vinegar), and some hot pepper sauce.

Check out A Growing Tradition, Thomas has an excellent step-by-step tutorial on how to make potstickers and orange ginger dipping sauce.

Harvest Monday - February 22nd, 2010

 

Mini Napa 19 oz, Carrots 3 oz.

Garlic Shoots 6 oz, Scallions 6 oz.

Total 2.13 lb

  

Garlic Shoots after haircut. 

Garlic shoot is new this week, otherwise same old same old carrots, scallions, and napa cabbage, not much to show off this time of the year.   

The very small carrots were from mid September sowing, I was testing to see if the seeds will germinate and grow through the winter, they did and are starting to bulk up, I suppose they will be ready for harvest sometimes in April, just in time to clear the bed for tomatoes.  Ummm ~~~ I need to start tomato seeds NOW. 

Harvest Monday is hosted by Daphne's Dandelions.

Garlic Shoots

Garlic Sprouts Day 14
They will get a haircut for Harvest Monday.

Day 8

Day 5

Day 0

Aebleskiver (Pancake Balls)

This Swedish pancake ball has many names depending on which part of Europe one is traveling to or coming from, it is commonly referred to as aebleskiver or profferjes in this country, some other names for the ball pancake are: merfeilles, krapfchen, and ebleskiver.  The aebleskiver pan makes 7 balls at a time and  the batter can be used up pretty quickly.
 
This recipe makes about 12-13 balls:

2 egg whites

1 cup AP flour

1 tbsp sugar

¼ tsp salt

½ tsp baking powder

2 egg yolks

2 tbsp oil

½ cup light beer (or milk)

½ cup butter milk

1. Beat egg whites to soft peak and set aside.
2. In a bowl mix together the rest of the ingredients and fold in egg whites.

3. Lightly brush cavities of the aebleskiver pan with melted butter, and carefully pour batter into the cavities to about 3/4 full.
4. Bake at medium low heat, when bottom crust is formed, turn the dough with a skewer about 1/3 of a turn, repeat 1/3 turns until a ball is formed.

Serve warm with homemade jam or dust with powder sugar.

Cook's note -- this recipe originally published here in August 2007.

Wordless Friday

Harvest Monday - February 15th, 2010

  

Spinach 17 oz, carrots 6 oz, scallions 10 oz.

Gave 1.5 lb Japanese turnip to neighbor.

Total harvest 3.56 lb

The spinach keeps on giving, I'm very please with its performance. I sowed a mixture of Bloomsdale and Chinese spinach on August 1st of last year, they had been growing slowly through the winter, I harvested every 3-4 weeks during the coldest months of December - January; lately they've pickup speed with warming temperature and longer daylights, I may get lucky and have two more harvests before they bolt (just dreaming). 

Mini Napa doing well, they grow steadily under low tunnel despite cold temperature.  Adult cabbage maggots (resemble house flies) are emerging, when I lifted the tunnel cover the adult maggots escaped, the yellow sticky traps inside the tunnel were covered with flies.  Some of the escapees didn't get too far, they quickly return to the floating cover and I was able to smash quite a few with my gloved hands (gross). Currently our night time temperature ranges from mid teens to low 20s, the plastic cover has come off, but I'm keeping the floating cover on at night until we're out of freezing temp and occasional snow storm.

 

These Michihili Napa form a loose head, ties are used to bundle up the leaves to blanch and to help form a "head" sooner.  The elastics are not strong enough to hold the leaves together, I'll have to try something else, maybe some kind of stretchable net or pantyhose.

 

Michihili growing in container, these do really well with only one layer of medium weight floating cover.  I harvested the outer leaves twice this winter, each harvest was in the vicinity of 1lb to l.5 lb, that's pretty good for 3 plants.

Harvest Monday is hosted by Daphne's Dandelion, go take a look see what other gardeners are harvesting.

Double Happiness - Chinese New Year & Valentine's Day

Happy Chinese New Year

祝各位新年快樂  萬事如意

 Happy Valentine's Day

祝各位情人節愉快

Honey Yuzu Marmalade and Meyer Lemon Marmalade

 

Honey Yuzu Marmalade (amber color)

Meyer Lemon Marmalade (yellow color)

 

The lemon marmalade is the same recipe that Thomas used for his meyer lemon marmalade, Thomas' post detailed how to make the preserve with step-by-step photos, it is much better than what I can explain here.

Honey yuzu marmalade also know as "Citron Honey Tea" in China, Japan, and Korea. This marmalade is used as "tea" in Asia, and it is not intended to use on toast or crackers, but you may use it anyway you wish, no law says you cannot spread it on toast or anything else, I've used it to marinade or glaze BBQ pork, ribs, and chicken, they all turned out delicious.

I made my yuzu marmalade this way:

1         cup   thinly sliced yuzu (about 1/2 lb)

1 1/2  cup   water

1         cup   honey

1         cup   sugar

1/2      tsp    salt

1.  Combine yuzu and water in a sauce pan, bring to boil, lower heat and simmer 5-7 minutes.

2.  Add honey, sugar, and salt to yuzu, bring to boil, lower heat continue to simmer 8-10 minutes, stir and skim foam as needed.

3.  Pack into sterile jars, refrigerate or process in hot water bath for 10 minutes.

Makes 2 cups or four 4 oz jars.

Signs of Spring

 

  

Flowering quince is budding.

Chrysanthemum is popping up.

Johnny jumps up.

And the neglected broccoli produce some side shoots.

It's a beautiful day!

Kumquat ER

 

Killing the tree with too much love, see the curley leaves?

It is soaking in a bucket of warm water to loosen up 

its tangled roots, and to wash off the extra fertilizer.

  

After 1/2 hour of soaking and trimming off fried feeder roots,

the root ball looked like this, but the center was still a solid mass.

 

 It took 3 soakings and more trimming to untangle the root ball.

The roots appear healthy and not damaged at final inspection.

Repot the tree with fresh soil, 

this baby is strong, she will survive the trauma. 

 

 Then I spray the tree with this stuff, 

don't know it works or not, never used it before.

 

The tree looked like this last Spring.

 

It produced about 4 lbs of kumquat last year.

This is the 3rd kumquat tree Mr. B killed with kindness, he figures more food is better for the plant. The first kumquat tree came from my brother when we retired to the desert, it was a big beautiful tree loaded with fruits, Mr. B thought the tree needed more food (like a pregnant woman, ya know) since it bored so many fruits, he buried 4 small sticks of fertilizer into the pot, I didn't know it at the time, of course the tree was fried and was gone in 2 days.  The second kumquat tree was treated with care, he carefully scattered a "small" handful of citrus food into the pot and watered it everyday for the entire weekend,  I was out of town at the time, and I didn't know what happened to the tree until it was too late. Here comes the 3rd kumquat tree and I caught it in time, one look at the leaves and I know, I don't bother to ask anymore, can anyone teach an old dog new tricks?

You may be curious as to why I would entrust the care of these trees to someone obviously don't get it?  Here's the scoop, every year we move cold tender plants to the old house to overwinter in the sunroom, Mr. B has a collection of helicopters, robots, and trains in that house, he goes over there frequently to play and talk to his toys, needless to say, watering the plants at the old house is his duty while he's there, I have no idea the plants are receiving extra care.  Well, third time is a charm, I remove all traces of fertilizer from that house, and Mr. B is banned from feeding any plants without supervision.

In case anyone wants to know about the meyer lemon and yuzu, they lost lots of leaves and look pathetic, I'll have to perform the same surgery tomorrow and see if they can pull through.  The kaffir lime and blood orange seem to holdup pretty well, I'm keeping an eye on them, there's no hurry to repot the trees at this time.

Amaryllis

Amaryllis -- $1.25 kit from big box

 One bulb, one 6" pot and a coir disk, just add water.

Flowering period:  December - June

Flowering Time:  7 - 10 weeks

I thought the flowers will be pinkish white as shown on the box, but they turn out red, it's disappointing, but not too much, this is the cheapest flower I ever bought.  The 75% off kits were sitting next to the checkout lane, it was too convenient not to toss one into the shopping basket.

Wordless Garlic Day

My hands were itching to do something,

so I grabbed a bag of garlic and separated the cloves.

 

My hands did not stopped itching, so I peeled all of garlic,

poured some water into the bowls and hope they sprout.

(There, I feel better now, thank you!)

 

Wordless Snowy Wednesday

Juan (one seed) in ten lemons, can you tell which one?

All cracked up -- I planted these yuzu seeds,

don't know they will sprout or not.

There will be some interesting house plants if they sprout.

I have some seeds to spare if anyone wants to play with it,

first come first serve.

2/6/10  All seeds have been spoken for, thank you everyone
for participating, I'll send out the seeds sometime next week.