The last time I met Lina, proprietor of Le Charm, a French bistro in San Francisco, it was Feb 15th dinner at her restaurant. She flitted from table to table, serving up food as well as serious gossip, oozing professional charm. "You are. So. Thin." She always knew the right thing to say to each of her diners. And that was always the right thing to say. Unlike most times Lina saw me - in my Chef jacket and dirty from the rigors of the kitchen - on this post V-Day, I was all cleaned up and appropriately dressed.  We chatted and set a rendezvous to make dumplings. The humble dumpling, to Lina, is filled with not only meat and vegetables but nostalgia of growing up in Taipei.

Shopping 

We met on the appointed day and immediately headed out to do our shopping on Clement St, San Francisco's 2nd Chinatown, right smack in mid-morning shopping rush / pre-mad-lunch frenzy.  Mission du jour was to make these wondrous dumplings by first, shopping for the ingredients.  We dodged aloof shoppers swinging baskets and squeezed through tight aisles to get to the meat counter. We grabbed pork, for Lina and lamb for me.  Then we shopped for the wraps. Lina darted here and there, disclosing info like she did Le Charm tables: rapid and concise but in a manic sort of way. Especially when she was so accustomed to slip from English to French, or, as was our case, Cantonese and Mandarin. 

"Thick wraps are for potstickers. The thinnest is for Siu Mai. We need the medium wrap." Or the package that said "Shui Gow" , note to self. Shui Gou is Cantonese, Xui Jiow is Mandarin, Lina's Taiwanese tongue. Shui Gou or Xui Jiow both translated to "Water Stir". Because umm... they are cooked in liquid and have to be stirred? I have no clue. I am not one to demystify the intricacies of Chinese language. I feel adequate just doing better than most maneuvering inside a Chinese grocery where by an “Ex-cue me” is exactly like a kitchen's “Hot behind you.” -  Nothing more than “Get outta my way.” 

In all this combat, we picked up more necessities : dipping condiments, soup stock and a cup of strong milk tea - Lina's choice of go-juice. I pointed out that this was a lot of work just for a snack. Before Lina went on another tirade of me not cooking for myself anymore, I quipped, I'd joyfully - no, maniacally - eat dumplings too with my afternoon tea ("Yum Cha") if I had a Shui Gou cook! 

It turned out, she later revealed that the endearment jelled with her aunt in San Antonio, where Lina actually participated in their production. "My aunt's idea of a meal is say, sautéed vegetables." We were back in her kitchen, chopping. I waited. Okaaay? "Only one kind of vegetable," she added. What is the world coming to! 

"Our Taiwanese cook would make five, six dishes and there was always a soup." But her aunt's one saving grace was her Xui Jiow.

"My cousins would return from college and my sisters and I all gathered and we would make dumplings. We all dug into it. Someone would roll out the dough, some will wrap, pairs of hands ar-..." 

There was little I imagined Lina doing that couldn't beat in fanfare, than wrapping dumplings at her Aunt's in Texas. After all, amidst her chopping, we parleyed on yet another exotic trip of hers. But in the tradition of holidays, special events or ... Saturday, when family congregate and collectively cook, we do something to our memory and palate. Possibly, come away with dishes so commemorative, so sentimental, that they ground our ostentation that culinary school, restaurant trends and foodies can perpetuate. Pointedly, no seared foie gras can ever replace Auntie's dumplings.

cooking 

Lina's funky loft looked like her Jeep - pretty things that were not just to look at, but actually used. The modern kitchen was small but I imagine, could withstand industrialized cooking assignments with its extensive remodelling. Once in it, I felt at once restored and calm; Lina, uncharacteristically organized. She immediately started on a napa cabbage. Chopping it roughly, she then salted and left it in a bowl to sit.

Unless you were a knife fiend, the filling ingredients could easily all be pulsed. "No control" Lina offered, for her preference over the knife. The C word - yes, what every chef strives for. Purists swore hand-minced garlic lasted longer than machine blends, thanks to its uniformity. In my opinion, to use a mixer, you end up with an extra thing to wash and put away ... 'easy' is relative. Chefs are first knife fiends before they are dishwashers. Surprise!

"On Chinese New Year," which was not a fortnight ago, "we all came here and made these from scratch. My sister made the dough, rolled ..." she depicted another version of hands-around-the table as she sliced prawns to make it resembled the ground pork, occasionally picking out bits a vein.  Wasn't there a subset of Chinese that has dumplings as a New Year dish? Like mine ate vegetarian, with an ingredient list as long as my arm. I've heard, for these Chinese, if one dumpling breaks while cooking, their year will be so-so. Lina shrugged, "Not my kind." Perhaps I was thinking of rice dumpling soup, the ones filled with sweet black sesame paste? "Anyway, we tried a new recipe this time, with lamb and basil."

I peeked into the cabbage bowl and the water that was gathering inside. Ingredients are key. What makes a dish a classic are its yin-yang components - ginger-soy, tomato-basil. Substitution is fine when we understand the role each one plays. The meat starred in Shui Gou, chives aromatize, cabbage lends texture. Fit in lamb and basil to any of these roles and lose not one essential building block, and you end up with a thing of beauty. A classic - the other C word - well, is always a noble goal.

By this time, a mound of chives sat next to the mound of prawns. Both received the same treatment by Blade Girl. "Wouldn't it be too salty?" I asked, always needing details, as I watched her gathered up too-much cabbage in her hands but squeezed it to fit. "Never. You can taste first before wrapping - to make sure. I can have an off day..." and since we didn't test, today wasn't one. "This is home-cooking!" Lina exclaimed in a brighter tone.   "It is all for fun! Kami, are you having fun??" On the counter space, in addition to our prep, abutted next to dried dates, fermented tofu in a jar and sheet trays she pulled out earlier, and a pot of stock already a-bubbling, there were two pompanos, an extra pound of prawns plus watercress and on-choy in the sink. She winked as she sipped her caffeine. I took a sip of mine from my never-leave-home-without-it thermos and could not help letting out a laughter. Fun? This? When the rest of the world was Monday-ing away? Oh, yes.

Now her voice dipped to sotto voce when she spoke again of the hallowed Shanghai-nese dumpling, Xiao Lung Bao. She has combined the meat-prawn and chive-cabbage together and was now fetching a can opener. "In Yank Sing, each XLB is wrapped with a lump of jellied stock for extra juiciness. That is why, aficionados use a spoon to eat it, to catch all the broth..." Clever choice! A stock that is congealed by its own gelatin can only be one that is concentrated enough. My head swam with other possible applications using this idea.

Technique is what differentiates good cooking from great cooking. The art of combining the stock to the filling is one. Like cooking risotto, add just enough liquid to incorporate before further additions. Lina, in churning butter motions, worked the stock in with a pair of chopsticks. Fine webs of protein trailed the sticks as they whirled in the mixture, a sure sign that it was pretty saturated with liquid.

Next came the part I find most tedious in cooking. Something about repeated mechanical motions that reminded me too much of rote learning, something I escaped to the kitchen from. Time to wrap and make individual Shui Gou. Ugh. If only we could rush through this, which we couldn't even if we weren't the kind of Chinese who relied the year's good fortune on the integrity of each dumpling. A good product, we did want. If only we could talk smack, had it not been rendered ineffectual as we pleated dough. And so, we settled on the humdrum of  plopping the mixture on a wrap, then sealing it closed by pinching in the middle and pleating each end towards the center, making a specific, forceful push each time. My back began to hurt again.

"Legend has it that one of the emperors came out his palace, dressed in commoner's clothes and as he got hungry, he approached a group huddling around a hot pot. He was so delighted with what he partook in that upon returning to his royal courts, described what he ate to his cooks. Tried as they might, they failed to reproduce them to his emperor's satisfaction. Until ..."

"There were no more cooks to behead?"

"One day," Lina pressed on, "he chanced upon one of his serfs eating during his break.." - "Right, union rules" - "and exclaimed, 'Aha! That's it!' It was the dumpling. For the emperor, the cooks made them to look like gold coins." Noteworthy, 'coins' then and there, were not little discs but little sailboat-like things. The potsticker, as we know it, is a good likeness. Especially pan-fried until golden brown.

Technique Part Deux. This I learned from our session. First, Lina decided that we would boil some and pan-fry the rest. To recap, boiling them made Shui Gou; pan-frying, potstickers. Our hardwork yielded 2 sheet trays-ful. She placed the dumplings one by one into the boiling water. Salted? No. Meanwhile a pan of oil heated up. What kind? Extra virgin olive oil. My telling expression told Lina we're not in Taipei, Taiwan anymore.

As the starch hydrated in the water, like a stamp being licked, the wraps quickly tended to stick. Stir them to redistribute the starch to avoid this. While we waited for a full boil again, Lina resituated the sheet tray and turned towards the hot pan. She picked a dumpling up and held it in the oil to test the sizzle factor. Not too lame, not too hot - she quickly loaded up the pan. Potstickers are aptly named because its cooking technique, much relied on our searing skills and timing, creates a brown edge that just 'sticks' to the pot. Listening helps. With practice, the sizzle sounds will cue you to hit it with some liquid, put a lid on and finish the cooking in steam. Lina had a kettle ready for this.

At this juncture, the water with the dumplings are boiling again. With the same kettle of water, Lina poured in enough water to stop the boiling. "If it continues like this until it is cooked, some may open up." Thus, a way to temperate the water is necessary. "We do this three times."

The rim of the lid clattered over the potstickers, calling for Lina's attention again. After a quick peek, she dropped the lid back and killed the fire, returning to the boiling pot. She was one more tempering and re-boiling away before testing the pudding. When something is done right, like the professional slices and dices by a knife-peddler on QVC, it is beautiful to watch. Lina's artful multi-tasking allowed her in succession, to flip the entire pan of potstickers right on a plate and fish Sui Gous out of the water.

Eating 

It was past 8. We realized we were hungry when the food was set before us. The Sui Gous preened and glistened in a bowl. But the irresistability quotient hands down belonged to the potstickers. I practically grabbed one right off the pan.

 The golden crust with its bumps and cranies - you know it was crispy - crowned a side that was plumped up from the steaming - you know it was al-dente. They begged to be picked up and bitten into. Not a great idea. This action sent forth a burst of juiciness, might I add, a hot burst of juiciness, and with it, all the flavors of its contents. The best part was how the crunchy brown exterior yielded to the softer side, the toothy cabbage and the snappy prawns. For my sake, pork was left out. As good as it got, I would have loved to have a ground meat with a low fat content within the filling to act as liaison to all the chunky bits. Still, I appreciated Lina taking the trouble dicing the prawns vs mincing it.

 I placed one on a soup spoon, waited as long as I could bare, and bit away. The same eruption-in-the-mouth occurred. The flavor of the chives and prawns jumped out at you, unmasked by the slight toastiness that the potstickers imparted, resulting in a cleaner, crisper taste. But what I was most at awed by was the stock retaining quality of the Sui Gou. No one was gladder than I to have my skepticism, the one that mounted with each re-boiling, squashed. Besides this eruption-in-the-mouth thing was quite, quite easy to get used to.

 We were silent when privately savoring our first bites. Pretty soon Lina was prattling again about weird customs in exotic lands. Thank you Aunt Texas. We may start with the ingredients, but lasso in memory and family and we end with something that can only be described as a lifetime souvenir on a plate.