Cooking Dinner For Ten, I Mean Two

This past week one of my friends came over after work and we did something that we've never done before - we decided to be Asian. What does this entail? Actually going to the Chinese market, getting raw ingredients and making dinner. What do I usually eat for dinner? Something embarrassing to admit - it usually comes out of a box... Meaning: instant foods/dinner "helpers" or take out. Well to be fair, sometimes it comes out of the freezer too. Haha, you get my point - it's usually a *very* lazy dinner.

First stop of the night was the market where we packed our cart full of random things - including a few mystery (to us) items. It was a huge experiment and I am so happy that we had something not only edible but also super tasty at the end!

What we ended up making was: dumpling soup, inarizushi and gyozas:

Dinner Is Served

I wish that I could say that I helped with the soup, but well, I didn't. I did absolutely nothing for that dish sooo I'll just show you a picture of the finished product. It was a dumpling and mushroom soup (with other ingredients that I can't remember..):

Dumpling Soup

I spearheaded making the Inarizushis though so, here was the process:

Making Inarizushi, Completed Ones In The Back

1. Ingredients needed: rice, sushi rice powder stuff, wrappers
2. Make short grain white rice (thank god I have a rice cooker which is pulled out twice a year
3. Fold the sushi rice powder into rice in a separate bowl
4. Fill Inarizushi wrappers

The last portion of our meal was something that we made together - gyoza/potstickers totally from scratch! We opted for a pork, green onion and garlic gyoza/potsticker. These were easy to make - time consuming, yes, but actually making them? Easy peasy. Here's how to make them:

Garlic, Pork & Green Onion Gyoza's

1. Ingredients needed: ground meat, garlic, green onion, gyoza/dumpling wrappers (can also be found at Safeway), one egg
2. Mix the meat, garlic and green onions into a bowl
3. Beat one egg into a small bowl
4. Lay out wrappers onto a cutting board, or other non-stick surface

5. Slater egg mixture onto the edges of the wrappers (I just used my finger cause I'm fancy like that)

Fancy Pants Technique Right There ;)

6. Fill with small portions of the meat mixture (remember that you need to close these pretty tightly so it doesn't seep out!)

No Magic Needed, Just Press To Seal

7. Fry in a pan - this is a multi-step process. First add oil to the pan, once it gets hot, place gyozas into the pan, after you let it sear for about 30 seconds, add water into the pan, cover the pan, turn heat on low, wait around 5-8 minutes, take lid off, let sit until the bottoms are golden brown

Yummmm, Fried Food

It was definitely a fun time, but let me tell you, my eyes are MUCH bigger than my stomach! It's been a few days now, and even with eating leftovers for lunch AND dinner, I still have a lot left... Just goes to show, really, do NOT go to the grocery store when hungry. Oy.