Biggs' Birthday Dinner - Giant Gyoza, Karagge Chicken Wings and Tempura Vegetables (by G)

Tonight is Bigg's something-or-other birthday so I wanted to do something special - or if not special, at least different.

Someone sent me a photo of a giant gyoza months ago and I instantly knew I wanted to make one for Biggs' Birthday. I had a practice run on Saturday and discovered that the maximum gyoza size is determined only by the size of the largest cooking implement we have - unfortunately our largest pot is not that big.  I did learn that for this sized gyoza the skin does not have to be that thick, so this time I rolled it a bit thinner than the other night.

The gyoza wrapper is just a mix of plain flour, bicarb and boiling water which is mixed and then rested for an hour before being kneeded and rolled out. The filling for tonight's giant gyoza is a recipe I've had for a long time - pork mince, spring onion, garlic, ginger, miso, chilli flakes, sugar and salted and squeezed cabbage. The key to getting flavour, I have discovered, is to add about 3 times as much garlic and ginger as the recipe calls for.  I fried the gyoza in sesame oil for a couple of minutes then added boiling water and steamed it for about half an hour - field tests revealed that this is enough time for the mince to cook.

I thought I should diversify a bit incase the gyoza was inedible so I made some karagge chicken wings (marinated in soy, ginger, garlic, soy, mirin, rice wine vinegar, sake and sesame oil then dusted in potato starch then fried - I forgot to get potato starch so I just used hopper flour).

The vegetables (asparagus, capsicum and shitake mushrooms) were coated in tempura batter then fried.

In all, I would say this dinner was not that elegant but there was some pretty good flavour. The gyoza wrapper turned out better than the other night but the cook on it was not as good. I would have liked to have marinated the chicken for longer but dinner must be served at a decent hour.