Shrimp Potstickers

I’ve been so busy lately — organizing Wimbletube, trying to get John Waters to come to campus, managing the college’s radio station — that all of the food I’ve been making has come from the freezer. I don’t mean TV dinners or anything like that, it’s just that I throw all of the ingredients I buy at the grocery store into the freezer to cook later, though usually I forget about it until the easier options (oh, refried beans <3) run out. At the moment, there are two Cornish hens, a pound of gourmet Italian sausage, artisanal bacon, three giant bags of sliced apples, a bag of pate chaud filling, three bags of animal parts for stock and two containers of pho broth in there. Hmm. It didn’t seem so bad until I actually wrote it all down.

To that end, these potstickers are mostly made of invincible ingredients: frozen shrimp, wonton wrappers, soy sauce, month-old ginger… which is great for my wallet. It’s also really easy to get into The Zone while filling and sealing them. For some reason I’m really into the idea of filling things lately; something just clicks whenever I plop something onto a wrapper. Maybe I have a dumpling fetish? I can live with that.

Shrimp Potstickers

• wonton wrappers
• frozen shrimp, shelled
• 1 egg
• 1-inch of ginger, grated
• scallions, diced
• Napa cabbage, diced, salted and strained
• a few dashes of soy sauce
• black pepper
• vegetable oil

1. Blend the shrimp in a food processor with the egg, and transfer to a bowl. Add the ginger, scallions, cabbage, soy sauce and pepper. Cover it with saran wrap and let it sit in the fridge for a half hour.

2. Fill the wonton wrappers and seal edges by dampening them with water. Arrange the potstickers in a pan with a thin layer of oil over medium-high heat. Once the bottoms are golden brown, pour a little bit of water into the pan and immediately cover it. Lower the heat and let them steam until the water is absorbed. Then uncover the pan, crank up the heat and let them cook for a couple minutes longer. Transfer cooked potstickers to a plate with a paper towel to absorb the oil.

Bánh Pâté Chaud

Ever since I was a little kid, my mom would make these Vietnamese pastries for breakfast, though we’d eat them at all hours anyway. When I left for college, I pried the recipe for this cost-effective dish from her at the last minute. It has turned out to be one of the more useful things that I brought with me.

I hesitate to use the word “traditional” when referring to this dish; the very nature of Vietnamese cuisine sort of rebuts the word. Phở, for example, takes its name from the French “pot-au-feu.” That dish, which has become the meal that most typifies “traditional” Vietnamese food, is made using French techniques such as the bouquet garni.

But who gives a fuck, right? The important thing here is that the Vietnamese are notorious for appropriating the cuisine of their colonial overlords and making substantial leaps and bounds with their interpretations of it. And so, a few generations later, you have me making bánh pâté chaud in my residence hall kitchen.

Bánh Pâté Chaud

• 1 lb. ground chicken
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• a couple dashes of fish sauce
• pepper, maybe salt if you really feel like it
• 1 or 2 boxes of Pillsbury puff pastry dough (depending on how you fill them)

Mix all of the sexy ingredients, and insert a bit of the mixture into an approximately 2×2-inch square of pastry dough. Press the edges with a fork or your fingers. Brush some yolk on top if you want to get fancy.

Finally, throw it all into a 350-degree Fahrenheit oven for 20 minutes! These freeze really well, too.