Pretty much every cuisine has some kind of dumpling, and this week we look at three of them.
Shanghai Taste in Las Vegas has a whole new lineup of dumplings, including a soup dumpling filled with shrimp and cucumber juice.
The Mandarin Chinese word for soup dumpling is xiao long bao. The long is the steamer tray in which the dumplings are served. Xiao means “small” because the tray is smaller than those used for the more common, fluffier dumplings. Bao, as you might have guessed, means dumpling.
Chef and owner Jimmy Li colors them green with bok choi juice, and green is also the theme of the seasonal dumpling at Alfie’s Kitchen & Bar in New York City, where chef Darren Pettigrew is stuffing ravioli with peas and serving them in a buttery green sauce.
In Napa Valley, at Press in St. Helena, Calif., Philip Tessier is forming dumpling skin simply by covering ricotta balls with fine 00 flour, which he then wraps in squash blossoms for delicate gnudi.
But not everything’s a dumpling. At The Winery Restaurant & Wine Bar, with two locations in Southern California, chef Yvon Goetz draws inspiration from a French dessert to make a stacked tuna tartare, in in Denver, at Forget Me Not Cocktail Bar, the flavor of birch gives nuance to a take on the Old Fashioned.
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