Jiao zi are popular in Northern China in areas such as Beijing and Shangtung where wheat flour is used. In the Northeast of the United States these tasty dumplings are commonly called "Peking Ravioli," a name coined and made popular by my mother when we opened our first restaurant in the late 1950's.
My mother coined the name Peking Ravioli, because when we started serving jiao-zi in our restaurant in the 1950's, no one had seen anything like them before. Borrowing from the Italian at least gave people the idea that they were dough pockets with a filling. Interestingly, although the name potsticker is common now, just about all the Chinese restaurants in this area still call these dumplings Peking Ravioli because of my mother's influence.
Making Jiao zi is a social occasion for the whole family and a tradition during Chinese New Year. Here I am with my goddaughter making jiao zi for the new year. The dumplings take on different names depending upon the manner in which they are cooked. If they are pan fried, they are called "guo tie" or potsticker because they stick to the pot when cooked. If they are boiled they are called "jiao zi."
I will give you my mother's recipe for the dumplings just as she gave to me:
JIAO ZI or PEKING RAVIOLI
YIELD: 32 DUMPLINGS
1 pound napa cabbage
1 ½ teaspoon salt, divided
¾ pound ground pork
1 ½ tablespoons dark soy sauce
1 tablespoon dry sherry
½ teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon vegetable oil or bacon drippings
1 tablespoon sesame seed oil
1 pound round dumpling wrappers - Wash and drain cabbage and chop very fine, sprinkling 1 teaspoon salt over the cabbage as you chop. Place chopped cabbage in a cloth bag or in a sheet of cheesecloth, doubled over. Squeeze out enough liquid to make 1 cup. Discard liquid.
- Put the remaining ingredients, except the wrappers, into a large bowl and add the cabbage. Mix well – hand mixing is the best way. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use.
There will be enough meat filling for about 32 jiao zi.
It’s now fairly easy to find round dough wrappers called Dumpling or Gyoza wrappers in a good supermarket or Asian market. I like to use Twin Marquis brand “Dumpling Wrapper (Shanghai Style)” which come in 16 ounce packages.
TO FORM THE DUMPLINGS:
- Place a heaping teaspoon of the filling in the center of a round wrapper.
- Fold the wrapper in half to form a half moon shape and brush the edges with a little water.
- Pinch the edges together to seal tightly (you can also use Helen’s Asian Kitchen Dumplings Press).
- Place formed dumplings on a floured baking sheet or plate until ready to cook. Keep them covered with a damp cloth to prevent drying.
NOTE: Uncooked dumplings may be kept in the refrigerator for several days or frozen for several weeks. To freeze, place the dumplings on floured baking sheets in the freezer. When they have frozen, you can put them into a plastic bag and seal. Do not drop them into a freezer bag while they are soft or they will stick together.
TO BOIL THE DUMPLINGS:
- Bring 5 quarts of water to a boil in a stock pot.
- Slip the dumplings into the boiling water, being sure there is enough room to allow them to swim about freely; cover and cook over medium high heat until water boils again. Keep and eye on the pot because it can foam and boil over easily.
- As soon as the water returns to a boil, add a cup of cold water, cover and continue cooking over medium
heat. When the water comes to a boil a third time remove from heat and let stand, covered, for 2 - 3 minutes. This procedure ensures that the filling will be cooked through. - Remove dumplings with a wire strainer and drain in a colander. Transfer to a plate or shallow platter and serve immediately.
It is customary to serve boiled jiao-zi with a vinegar/soy(light)/hot oil dip that guests may put together themselves. Just set out cruets of each (you can also use Chinkiang vinegar) and let people mix their own. My family and I actually prefer to eat jiao-zi with just cider vinegar.
For a whole meal, Chinese style, allow 6 to 15 pieces per person depending upon their appetite. The Chinese also like to serve the cooking water as a refreshing hot beverage after the meal. I personally find it tasteless, but many Chinese are partial to it.
Copyright© 1994, 2007, 2009 Helen Chen. All rights reserved.
Helen's Asian Kitchen is not associated with Joyce Chen Products.
That’s the greeting that will be heard throughout Asia as January 26, 2009 ushers in the New Year – THE YEAR OF THE OX . . .
Chinese New Year, known in China as the Spring Festival, celebrates the coming of spring with its symbols of rebirth and renewal. It’s a chance for a new start and a chance to wipe out the old and begin with a clean slate.
This year the New Year coincides closely with the January 20th inauguration of Barack Obama as our 44th president of the United States – a hope for change and renewal in the United States.
In the Far East, the lunar New Year is a serious celebration with much feasting and socializing. Millions of Chinese will be traveling to be with family and loved ones during this most auspicious and important celebration.
As opposed to common thought, it is not a time to be a tourist in China. Offices, stores, factories – practically everything – will be closed and at a standstill. It will be almost impossible to get train or air tickets because they will have been sold out long in anticipation of the New Year.
In China, as with all Chinese celebrations, food plays a central role in the New Year festivities. Of course my childhood memories of red envelopes with “lucky” money was anticipated and enjoyed, but my strongest memories are of the special foods my mother prepared for the New Year.
My Favorite New Year Foods
Two dishes spring to mind – sweet glutinous rice cakes called nian gao and Beijing style boiled dumplings called, jiao zi.
You can find ready-made Cantonese style nian gao at most Asian markets during the Chinese New Year, but I’ve yet to find the Shanghai style nian gao my mother used to make flavored with fragrant sweet olive flowers.
Nian gao is literally translated as “sticky cake”. The words are homonyms for “Year High” - in others words - a great year to come. A high year means you will have good fortune throughout the year and the stickiness symbolizes the sticking together of the family.
My mother's sweet nian gao was made with ground glutinous rice mixed with water and white sugar. She would sprinkle candied sweet olive flowers on it for fragrance and flavor, tint it pink for good luck and then the whole thing would be steamed.
Cantonese nian gao is made with the same glutinous rice flour and water, but sweetened with brown sugar and sometimes garnished with Chinese dates, known as jujubes. As a child I used to call nian gao “glue” because of its extraordinarily sticky and elastic texture.
Shanghai nian gao vs. Ningbo nian gao
Don’t confuse my mother's sweet Shanghai style nian gao with Ningbo nian gao (Sometimes also called Shanghai nian gao.) Although made from the same 
glutinous rice, Ningbo nian gao have a much more dense and firm texture (although still sticky and chewy when cooked). Ningbo nian gao looks like a flat, narrow white slab. It's sliced and usually sold in this country frozen in 2-pound bags. Frozen Ningbo nian gao is available in most Asian markets and the slices can be cooked into a savory or sweet dish. If you’d like to know more about Ningbo nian gao let me know.
The special feature of my mother’s nian gao are the candied sweet olive flowers (a.k.a. osmanthus), which we call gui hua in Chinese.
People from Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces flavor their New Year cakes with these flowers, much the way Westerners would use vanilla. Sweet olive flowers come from the Osmanthus fragrans tree which is related to the laurel. These trees grow in mass profusion in Guilin (named after the trees) and Hangzhou along the beautiful West Lake. Hangzhou is famous for the high quality of their sweet olive flowers. In October the tiny flowers – only 
about ¼ inch long – are harvested. I was in Hangzhou once for the harvest and the whole city was drunk with the heady fragrance of the flowers. It’s an olfactory experience one never forgets. I found it most interesting watching the harvest of these tiny blossoms. The harvesters walk around the city with long bamboo poles. They spread large cotton sheets under the tree and slap the tree branches with the poles to make the flowers drop. All the flowers are collected in large wooden wheelbarrows and taken away for processing into sugar, candies, liquors, tea, etc. For more information on the Osmanthus fragrans tree, check out this link: http://www.trax2.com/info/factsheets/osmanthus.html.
I have a sweet olive tree growing in my own greenhouse (a gift from my father over 20 years ago) that’s over 6 feet tall, but I have found that its blossoms aren’t as fragrant as those in China. My sixth aunt tells me that the sweet olive trees here in the U.S. are not the same as the more yellow colored Chinese ones. I used to painstakingly collect and dry the flowers from my tree for cooking, but stopped after I realized they were really lacking in taste and aroma. Now, I just enjoy the fragrance when the tree is in bloom.
Whenever I visit Hangzhou to see my one of my first cousins I always come home with many packets of sweet olive sugar for myself and as gifts. They keep a long time. In fact, I have a jar of sweet olive sugar (complete with the blossoms) from 1997 and it’s still good and still fragrant!
My second favorite New Year food is the Beijing jiao zi (more commonly known in this country as potstickers). Not as popular as the pan fried version, these pork filled dumplings are called jiao zi when they are boiled (the preferred cooking method to the Chinese). When the dumplings are pan fried they are called guo tie or literally, pot stick, because they tend to stick to the pot when fried.
The tradition in China is for the family to get together and make loads of jiao zi for the main meal of the day. In my family we used to count how many we could eat and announce that number at the end of the meal. My mother was born in Beijing so this Northern tradition of making and eating jiao zi remained a strong ritual in our home.
Most people don’t make their own dumpling skins anymore because it’s so easy to buy them in Asian markets. Get the ones that are round, not square. And a plastic dumpling press really helps to get the production line going. In fact, one of my first cousins who lives in the U.S. (I have over 30 first cousins, some in the U.S., but most are still in China ) has a supply of the plastic presses in her kitchen for just such a New Year’s tradition. She loves to use that press! (To find out more about the press, check out www.helensasiankitchen.com. Available in most kitchen and houseware shops near you!)
Along with the nian gao recipe I also give you my mother’s jiao zi recipe which was published in my now out of print cook book, Helen Chen’s Chinese Home Cooking. If you’re interested in the book you may still be able to find used copies floating around on Amazon or Ebay.
The nian gao and jiao zi recipes are given in memory of my mother and father. I hope you enjoy them. GONG XI FA CAI! May you have a happy, healthy and successful New Year. HAPPY NEW YEAR! - HELEN CHEN
Copyright© 2009 by Helen Chen. All Rights Reserved.
Helen's Asian Kitchen is not affiliated with Joyce Chen Products.
ABOUT HELEN CHEN
Like so many of us, Helen Chen learned to cook at her mother's side. But few of us had a mother like Joyce Chen. Helen grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where her mother prepared the authentic dishes of her native Shanghai and Beijing with the sort of regularity the rest of us came to expect of macaroni and cheese or meatloaf.
"I remember when I was little, watching my mother prepare meals for family and friends. I once wrote a list of my favorite Chinese dishes," Helen recalls, "I came up with 150 recipes. I do not have one or two favorites. All the dishes on the list are traditional and all are ones that I learned from my mother. That is what I love most about Chinese food: its variety. Taste, texture and color all come into play, as does personality and culture. I think this is what cooking is all about."
Soft spoken and intensely intelligent, Helen Chen was born in Shanghai and moved to the U.S. with her family while still a baby. Helen grew up, as she describes it, in a traditional Chinese-American household. "When I was young I wanted to be totally American," she remembers. "It wasn't until I was in high school that I realized how lucky I was to have two cultures."
Today, Helen Chen is a widely acknowledged expert in Chinese cooking. Besides her role as an educator and cookbook author, she also is a corporate spokesperson and business consultant to the house wares industry. In 2007 she created and developed a new line of Asian kitchenware under the brand name Helen’s Asian Kitchen®, expressly for Harold Import Company in New Jersey.
Having been born in China and raised and educated in the United States, Helen brings the best of both worlds to her approach to the art of Chinese cuisine. She understands the needs of the American cook as only a native can, yet she is intimately knowledgeable in the culinary practices and philosophy of China.
In her active role as a teacher and educator, Helen teaches Chinese cuisine at Boston University; and, through the Anderson Foundation’s enrichment program ‘Cooking Up Culture’ she teaches Boston area school children from grades 1-12 about Chinese cuisine and culture. She also teaches Asian cuisine in numerous cooking schools across the country.
Helen has lectured to various professional and culinary organizations such as the International Association of Culinary Professionals, Boston University Seminars in the Arts and Culinary Arts, Oldways Preservations and Exchange Trust, Small Business Development Center, The Culinary Historians of Boston, Women Chefs and Restaurateurs and the Culinary Guild of New England. In addition, she conducts culinary tours of Boston’s Chinatown and is a frequent guest chef at cooking schools around the U.S.
Helen is the author of Helen Chen’s Chinese Home Cooking (Hearst Books, 1994), Peking Cuisine (Orion Books,1997) and Helen’s Asian Kitchen: Easy Chinese Stir-Fries (John Wiley & Sons, 2009). A second book in the Helen’s Asian Kitchen series, Helen’s Asian Kitchen: Easy Asian Noodles is scheduled for publication in January, 2010.
Jiao zi are popular in Northern China in areas such as Beijing and Shangtung where wheat flour is used. In the Northeast of the United States these tasty dumplings are commonly called "Peking Ravioli," a name coined and made popular by my mother when we opened our first restaurant in the late 1950's.
