Homemade dumplings

Since we had those awesome dumplings at Frank's noodle house, I wanted to see if I can make them at home. The filling at Frank's is pork and chives. That's easy enough. Note what Chinese call chives is different from the common western herb. Chinese version is a lot more pungent when it's raw and is often used as a vegetable ingredient than a herb.

I made my filling with finely chopped chives (thanks to Jose and his sore wrist from chopping), ground pork, soy sauce, five spice powder and a dash of xiaoxing wine. I also added an egg for binding the ingredients together. I bought ready made wrappers to save time. I decided that we were going to boil them instead of pan searing or steaming in order to max the comfort factor. Nothing warms you up like a plate of just boiled dumplings.

They look really neat before cooking

Again it took me over two hours to make 50 dumplings. It barely took us 20 minutes to eat 30 of them. My filling isn't as soft as Frank's. Mine has higher meat-to-chives ratio (I sound like a nerd, I know), which might have contributed to the tougher texture. The store-bought wrappers are also inferior to home-made ones. But they are quite delicious indeed. For the amount of work I put in, this would remain an occasional indulgence.

Frank's noodle house

Our friend Louisa recommended Frank's before moving away from Portland. I clearly remember how she described the place: awesome noodles, no ambiance. Continuing on my craving for carbs-loaded comfort food, we made our way to Frank's on a Friday evening.

The store front is uniquely Portland. It's a residential house off Broadway street. Not much outside the house suggests that it's a business, until you look for it. I say that it looks uniquely Portland because I don't remember seeing this much else where. Portland is known as a city where it's easy for people to start a small business. The culture is that more often than not, people would do it with the minimum start-up cost. So instead of paying to build up a commercial space, people often operate in an existing residential space. Looks like Frank decided to buy/rent this house in which to run his hand-made noodle business.

The feel inside the restaurant is even more homey. It's like being invited to someone's home for dinner. It's quite clean for a Chinese restaurant. =) Frank apparently loves his floor and goes to a great length protecting it.

As savvy diners, we consulted yelp and other restaurant review sites for what's good and what's not, and have learned that we should stick to what the name of the restaurant says. People come here for their hand-made noodles. Everything else they offer seems mediocre. Though their hand-made dumplings is supposedly another must-try. So we took the advice to heart and ordered two noodle dishes and a dumpling appetizer.

The dumplings are good, almost reminds of the ones they have in China. Somehow good dumplings are hard to find in the US. The noodles looked awesome, coated with thick sauce. The squid noodle was very well seasoned and a bit spicy for me. There are bits of squid tentacles here and there. Though I wish there was more. The handmade noodles are tougher than we expected. The flavor seemed to stay on the surface of the noodles, but not absorbed inside. The other noodle dish was noodle with black bean sauce, which is Jose's all time favorite noodle dish. Frank's rendition lacks the strong fermented black bean flavor. The sauce was thick, but there's no visible black beans in it. It was good, as we polished both dishes, but no where near as good as it could be.

hand-made noodles with squid, medium spicy

noodles with black bean sauce

On our way home, Jose said he wouldn't return to Franks. We both agreed that the dumplings were really nice. But we could make dumplings at home that are somewhat comparable. So I made a mental note to get supplies over the weekend for home made dumplings. See the next post.

Soup dumplings

It’s been a while since I blogged about what I’ve been cooking for the past few weeks (on the weekends only). So I’m posting multiple entries at once to catch up.

It’s been pretty much the same temperature in Portland since we moved here three months ago. High 50s and low above freezing. But the rain and lack of sun has made me crave comfort food. To me comfort food is typically carbs-laden and steaming warm. Kenji from Serious Eats was featuring Chinese dishes for a week. One of them was soup dumplings, which are small doughy dumplings with ultra juicy filling, so much so that you need to be careful when biting into a hot dumpling as to not burn your mouth with hot juice bursting out of the dumpling.

I decide to do a version with less fuss. In Kenji’s recipe he’d stuff a chunk of gelatinous “soup” in the dumpling. The heat of cooking would melt the gelatin and create the soupy goodness. But that’s a lot of work. Basically I made soup dumplings without soup. You’d say “would that be plain dumplings?” In Chinese dumplings refer to this other thing. So mine is really soup dumplings minus the soupy part. Make sense? I didn’t think so either…

I made the wrappers and the filling all from scratch. You can follow Kenji’s recipe on both components. I stuffed mine with a mixture of ground pork, shitaki mushroom and lots of chopped scallion. The wrapping of these dumplings isn’t too different from the “pork buns” from the previous post. 

The steamed dumplings have glistening exterior that's both soft and chewy at the same time, if that makes any sense. 

These yummy bites are juicy even without the additional soup gelatin.

The whole process of making the dumplings took about 2 hours. But it took no more than 15 minutes for us to eat them all up. Mmm, carb-y comforting goodness. Now I’m really for a nap.

Visiting Pittock Mansion...

It's been a couple weeks since my last post. It's been a couple of busy weeks. Because of Jose's new diet, I'm not doing much cooking experiments either.
Today is Easter, a rainy Easter in Portland. The temperature is back to the 50s. The rain makes it even colder. We went to Lisa's place for brunch. She lives up in the hills around NW 23rd area, just straight west of us. I was never a big fan of living up the hills because of all the story we heard about icing driving conditions on the slops in winter seasons. But as we were driving up the hill, I was captivated by the amazing views and the absolute lushness. It was beautiful.
After food, Lisa took us to the Pittock Mansion, a French Renaissance style chateau on top of the hill just half a mile further. The mansion belonged to the Pittock family. More than half century ago the city bought the estate from the family and established the historic status and has been renovating it. Today you can pay $8 for a self-guided tour. I forgot my camera, so the digi-cam in my phone would have to do.

The music room. Some of the furniture piece were not from the Pittock family, but rather donated to represent the era

There are at least 2-3 full size dining rooms, 5 bedrooms and 3 full size bathrooms in the building. Most of the rooms occupy the first and second floor. There is a lower level, which seems mostly visitor info center and public bathrooms. 
There are also a dedicated music room, a family room, a writing room, two sleeping porches, a child's room and sewing room, two full size walk-in closets and a full-size kitchen, a full size pantry room and a full-size refrigerator room. I might have miss one or two smaller alcoves. Every room seems to have its own telephone. I thought the most fascinating rooms are the kitchen and the bathroom. Funny how that works...

The stove from the earlier 20 century

The full size refrigerator room and the pantry room

A predecessor of modern day body spray shower. But they had something we don't see today, a "Bidet" spray. Yes, you guessed it, it's for cleansing the private area. Unlike Toto's all-in-one super toilet, this is built as part of the shower.

Odd shape for a toilet tank; A dedicated sit-bath. Back then people seemed to take personal hygiene a lot more seriously

A new dining table

I've been eying this table from west elm for a couple years now. Our old IKEA table has served us well for over six years. We entertained so many guests and created countless memories enjoying delicious food with close friends.
Moving to a new place is not easy. We have to build new friendship. I want a better table to help carry on the tradition of good food and wonderful conversations. This table just seems right. It took a bit of convincing to get Jose on board though.
There is a West Elm within walking distance from our apartment. In the store, the table is decked out with matching benches and chairs. We wanted just the table. And that's what we got.
The package was so long, we drove the car home with the box sticking out the back and the trunk door completely open. I waved at whoever was driving behind us at a respectable distance. Should've taken a photo of that. =)
The table looks so much bigger in our apartment than in the store. But we love it. Jose's completely convinced now that he's seen it in our space. The table is solid. It's very simple in style with a lot of attention to the detail finish. This would give more freedom to selecting the chairs to go with them.

3by10

One thing about Portland design community is that it's very tightly knit. The second day after we arrived in the city we were invited to an event titled "3by10". Each month three people each would be giving a 10min talk about design and arts. It's a great way to get to know designers and artists in the city and see what they do. We've made it to every single 3by10 so far.

For March, I was asked to share something from my experience. I chose the topic of "design process, ideal vs. real-world", reflecting on how projects were run at Motorola. It was a fun experience. People seemed very engaged and asked a lot of questions during the Q&A session.

I also really enjoyed the talk from the other two presenters, both are small business owners. One is a ceramist who has her own shop in SE Portland, and the other a custom camera maker. You can check out their website to see the cool stuff they make. Pigeon Toe Ceramics and The Art of the Camera. Even though what I do is very different from what they do, you start to draw parallel when it comes to process and collaboration with other parties. Besides it's just fun to hear stories of how someone took an idea and built a successful business around it. It's very inspiring.

Art Institute of Portland has offered part of their shop space for this event

Q&A session following the presentations

Chinese steamed pork buns

I've always wanted to make these steamed stuffed buns (baos in Chinese). It was one of my favorite childhood memories to help mom make these. Hers were terrific.

I don't remember how she made her dough. So I found a recipe online that was meant for something slightly different. But I tried it anyway. The dough is made from flour, yeast, a little sugar, pinch of salt and warm water. The filling can be anything. I had ground pork, shitake mushroom and scallions.

The making / shaping of the buns is probably more challenging for people who are not familiar with this kind of stuff. I remember never able to do it when I was little. Mom tried teaching me many times. But when I picked up the wrapper and filled it with pork, I immediately knew how to wrap it.

Spin the dough as you pinch the edge together

In the steamer

Each bao has buffed up a little after steaming

the filling is so juicy that it's best consumed immediately =)