From offshore cpa

I’ve said this many times before, but one of my favorite aspects of living in Cayman is the fact that we’ve made friends from around the world on this tiny little Caribbean island. Americans are a true minority in Grand Cayman, which just means that a higher percentage of our friends are from faraway places, exposing us to their culture, their customs, and their culinary delights.

A while ago, a friend of ours who is originally from the UK and of Chinese descent agreed to teach a few of us girls how to make homemade gyozas, a popular Asian appetizer commonly known as “potstickers” by North Americans.

While EL set the stage in EW’s kitchen, we took detailed notes and surveyed the contents of the Asian grocery bag.

There are a wide variety of ingredients that can be used to fill gyozas, and EL had in his arsenal plenty of fresh offerings to entertain and tempt us.

While we prepped the gyoza “innards” (that’s an American word, not an Asian word, FYI), we sampled the delicious finished product, pre-made by the pro.

This is the kind of food that makes you try to say “yum” in multiple syllables.

It goes something like “yuh-uhh-hmm”.

If you’re interested in making this gyoza recipe, the steps and ingredients go something like this:

Blanche cabbage in boiling water, and then drain and squeeze out excess liquid. In a bowl, combine 4-6 cloves of minced garlic, chopped chives, chopped green onion, cabbage, and ground chicken. Season with sesame oil, soy sauce, a “smidge” of sake, and salt+pepper.

Finally, once all innards were prepped, it was time to fill these little guys. EL demonstrated perfect technique

To start, you put a tablespoon of filling in the middle of the wrapper.

Then dab the edge of the upper half of the wrapper with water. (This helps the create a seal.)

You then fold the bottom of the wrapper up to the top, keeping your index finger in between the two halves, making a taco shape.

Then comes the tricky part. Starting at one corner, you start pleating the top layer of the wrapper onto the bottom, creating little folds in the top layer while squeezing it onto the bottom layer.

Apparently, this is where the pros can get very fancy, making dozens of these folds on a single gyoza.

Next, we had the option of either freezing the raw gyozas on a cookie sheet (after which they could be bagged up and stored) or cooking them immediately. We did a bit of both, and the cooking process was pretty easy: Brown each side for a couple minutes in an oiled wok over medium-high, then steam them in the covered wok (add a bit of water for steam) until done, about 5-7 minutes.

Thanks to our pal EL for teaching/feeding all of us girls for the afternoon! We miss you, buddy; happy and safe travels!

Note: This is only an excerpt from the story  that is loaded with many more photographs and published at: http://offshorecpa.blogspot.com/2013/10/asian-cooking-in-cayman.html

Offshore cpa is a resource for expatriates in Grand Cayman; a journal for family and friends