Our first Veggi night menu had an Asian theme
Chinese style BBQ chicken (for those darned stubborn carnivores)
Spicy peanut noodle salad
Vegitarian Pot stickers
Iceberg lettuce with fresh orange wedges
The recipe that was the star of the night was the vegitarian potstickers. They are best made in a wok, but a high sidded frying pan will do. The biggest secret to good potstickers is DON'T lift the lid! They have to steam and they wont steam evenly if you lift the lid to check on them every few minutes. They take about 10 min a batch for all of the water to evaporate and that nice crisp bottom to develope. If You don't want them to have that, they are just as good as speamed dumplings.
this is the link to the food network page where i found the recipe
They also have a video there you can wqatch about wonton wrappers, and you can watch Alton Brown make these dumplings i think as well.
I hope you try this recipe. Honestly it was fabulous! The peanut noodle salad was heavy and dry. We added the pan juices from the BBQ chicken just to make it moist enough to eat so i'm not even going to bother sharing that recipe unless someone asks for it. And the sauce for the chicken was actually my own recipe, but i don't measure, i taste, so it's hard to share that recipe. I can say it was a hoisin base with garlic, chinese 5 spice, soy sauce, sesame oil, corriander, fresh ground pepper and sea salt. I sliced the chicken breasts into about 1/2" think peices, seasoned both sides with salt and pepper and browned them in olive oil. then i added the BBQ sauce and simmered it, covered, until it was cooked through. I tossed it a few times to keep it coated inthe sauce. When it was done the BBQ flavor had infused nicely and we had that nice pan gravy that saved the noodles.
This was alot of fun and i look forward to doing it again next week. Comments and questions welcome.
Take care
winter
