My Favorite Day Part Three: Spinach Tofu Dumplings

On Thursday we went to Harmon's, First Oriental, Chao's, and Bollywood Market and bought some things we thought we could cook with before sitting down to a delicious noodly, dumpling-esque lunch at Rooster.  On Friday, we got out all of our ingrdients, washed and chopped them, and started creating recipes.  Our spinach dumplings were delicious, and created on the fly.  I'll try to recreate the ingredient list and amounts for you, but here's the method: 1) saute vegetables and aromatics, as pictured above.

Add tofu, rice, and seasonings and saute until you get the seasonings, rice and tofu evenly distributed with the vegetables.  Taste to correct seasonings.  Fill dumpling wrappers by placing a tablespooon of filling in the middle of the wrappers, moistening the edges of the wrappers, folding and sealing.  Deep fry, steam, or pan fry.

Serve these babies with your favorite dipping sauce.  Non-vegetarians will never know they're eating tofu!

Spinach Dumpling Filling

1 bunch spinach washed and finely chopped

3 scallions, washed and finely chopped

1/2 cup grated carrots

1/2 c. crumbled fried tofu (we used our tofu stick fries)

2 cloves garlic, peeled and grated into the pan

1 T. grated fresh ginger

1 c. rice

1/2 t. salt

1 T. soy sauce

1 T. rice wine vinegar

Saute the garlic, ginger and scallions over medium heat for a minute or less, toss in carrots, then spinach, then tofu, then rice.  Add soy sauce, salt, and rice wine vinegar and cook until mixture is heated through and all seasonings, rice and vegetables are thoroughly incorporated.  Fill wrappers.

Or just eat it straight up.

Enjoy!