Homemade ‘fun guo’ 粉果 – steamed dumplings with Chinese vegetables and peanuts
My sister was over this afternoon with my niece who is the same age as my little boy. While the kids were playing, my sister helped me to make some ‘fun guo’, one of my favorite yum cha dish.
It is really simple to make. I first stir fried the filling with diced chicken, leek, five spice tofu, Chinese mushroom, salted radish, wood ear fungus and bamboo shoot; then I made the wrappers with wheat starch and tapioca. I have no talent using rolling pins, so I used my pasta machine to roll out the dough. While I was rolling out the dough and cutting out the wrappers, my sister worked on wrapping the dumplings.
Recipe is as follow:
Ingredients – filling
- 150g chicken thigh fillets, finely diced
- 25g Chinese mushroom, soaked in hot water for 30 minutes, finely diced
- 10g wood ear, soaked in hot water for 10 minutes, finely diced
- 10g lily bud, soaked in hot water for 10 minutes, remove hard tips, finely diced
- 50g leek, thinly sliced
- 50g five spice tofu, finely diced
- 50g bamboo shoot, finely diced
- 50g salted radish, finely diced
- 20g celery, finely diced
- 1 small carrot, remove skin, grated
- 10g coriander, chopped
- 2 tbsp shrimp shell
- 1/2 cup of peanut, lightly crashed
- 1 tbsp sesame oil
- 1 tbsp oyster sauce
- 3 tbsp sweet wine / cooking wine / sherry
- white pepper to taste
- cooking oil for pan frying
- 1 tbsp corn flour
Method – filling
In a frying pan, bring cooking oil to high heat, add chicken and leek, stir fry until the chicken has turned to pale color; add the remaining ingredients (except for corn flour) and simmer for 10 minutes; sprinkle corn flour over the ingredients, mix well and cook for a few more minutes until the filling has no observed liquid.
Ingredients – wrappers (makes about 30-40 wrappers)
- 1 cup wheat starch
- 1/2 cup tapioca
- 1 cup boiling water
- a few pinches of salt
Method – wrappers
Mix wheat starch, tapioca and salt in a mixing bowl; add boiling water gradually while constantly string the flour mix; then kneed the dough briefly until smooth (add a little more water or flour if required); break the dough in smaller pieces; run the dough through the pasta machine to get large sheets (I used the thickest setting on my pasta machine); cut out round wrappers from the sheets.
Method – dumplings
Spoon some filling in the middle of a wrapper, fold up and seal the side; repeat with the remaining wrappers.
Steam the dumplings in a steamer for approximately 15-20 minutes. Serve the dumplings warm with chili sauce (optional)
