Potstickers

o Amy's mother and sister are coming over for a Christmas-y dinner tomorrow (Sunday), and we had to figure out everything we're going to cook. Never had to do that for guests before--pretty exciting. Since we have a wonderful ham from our half pig share (from New Roots Farm in Newmarket, to save you from asking), we figured, what better time is there to use it than Christmas? We have the main protein for the meal figured out. Stay tuned and I'll most likely post pictures of it.

But dinner isn't just one delicious hunk of meat. We had to figure out vegetables, a starch, and I had to remember to feed my starter soon enough in advance to have fresh bread in time.

Something that I didn't think of until yesterday morning (3 days before the meal), however, was an appetizer. We have these cool dips I got off of Woot about two months ago, so we'll do those with some garlic sourdough (whoa gotta take the firm starter out of the fridge! OK all set), but that didn't seem fun enough, so we're also going to do pot stickers, too! Never made anything like them before, but we have PLENTY of ground pork, and I've read they're easy.

Not wanting to try something new on THE DAY of the dinner, I decided it would be best to have a trial run and just eat the results for dinner with Amy. The recipe we used is Alton Brown's, but I think it has too much of a ketchup/mustard thing going on and will modify it, so good thing we did a trial run! Not that these weren't freaking awesome, because they were, and I ate too many of them.

Did not make the won ton wrappers from scratch, sorry.

We were kind of shaping them according to rules, but in the end it really doesn't matter that much, trust me.

Let them cook 2 minutes untouched over medium heat. They sure do stick to the "pot".

This is cool; add some chick broth (we used stock, maybe not even from a chicken?) and cook for 2 minutes, covered, on low. It ends up giving them that wonderful slimy stickiness, plus it kind of vacuums out all of the air remaining inside.

Amy came up with a pretty great dipping sauce

After you finish a batch, you let them stay warm in the oven. How rustic is this picture?

This is supposed to be the sexy closeup, showing the inside just after I dipped it. So glad we're going to be making more of these tomorrow!

BRIAN OUT.