Shrimp and Pork Potstickers

I'm pretty sure I found the recipes for the dough (2 c. flour and 3/4 c. hot water), filling, and dipping sauce on Chow.com.  While I keep lots of Asian ingredients on hand, and often do Asian inspired dishes or marinades, this is my first stab at dumplings, or in this case, potstickers.  The same dough can be used for gyoza or shumai, if it's rolled a little thinner than for potstickers.

First, we have the formed dumplings, waiting to be fried, then steamed.

The cooking part (fry for a couple of minutes on the flat bottom, then add water, cover, and steam for three more) went off without a hitch.  I served it with a dipping sauce and asparagus.

The result was surprisingly good.  The ones I've gotten in a restaurant usually have neater pleating on the dough that forms the crescent shape, but the taste really isn't any better.  The only thing I would change next time is to either use reduced sodium soy sauce, or go 3:1 regular soy to water, in the dipping sauce.  The flavor was very Asian, but a little too salty, even for this salt lover.  The good news is that I got the hang of pleating the one side of the dough fairly quickly, and really only ended up with two or three sloppy looking ones.

It gives me one more thing to do with ground pork besides making breakfast sausage.

Sweet and Sour Pork

I've made this before with chicken instead of pork.  The sauce is the main thing, along with pineapple chunks.  For veggies, I'll use practically anything that needs to be used -- broccoli, zucchini, or whatever.  This evening, I went with bell pepper and onion, and butchered a fresh pineapple, rather than having to resort to canned in juice.  Sweet and sour sauce recipe follows the picture.

Sweet and Sour Sauce (makes approx. 2 cups):

3/4 c. sugar

1/3 c. white vinegar

2/3 c. pineapple juice (or water)

1/4 c. soy sauce (preferably reduced sodium)

1 Tbs. ketchup (or tomato paste)

2-1/2 Tbs. cornstarch

Mix ingredients; they will thicken when boiled.  Add more water, if you like it thinner.  Can be made in a saucepan ahead, and stored in the refrigerator for later use. 

For the meat portion of the dish, cube it, and marinate it in soy sauce for an hour or so before starting to saute the veggies.  The meat and pineapple chunks go in after the veggies are nearly done, and the sauce at the end, after the meat has browned.  The meat will finish cooking as the sauce comes to a boil and thickens.