Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Youthful Gyoza at Hana

Another Halloween has come and gone and I didn't get around to uploading the ninjyas. Oh well. Maybe next year...

Today is a post about my favorite quick meal - boiled (ex-frozen) dumplings from Gyoza no Hana in San Jose! These are so easy and so yummy, they make for perfect weekend brunches or even weekday breakfasts when I don't blog in the morning.

hana gyoza

Literally, all you have to do is dump them into boiling water, wait for the water to come to a boil, add 10 oz of cold water, let it come back to a boil, add another 10 oz of cold water and when the water comes back to a boil, the gyoza are done! They skin never rips (except for the one time the Papa Bear tried to make them) and the skin is deliciously smooth and thick without being doughy. The pork dumplings ooze with piping hot juice (much more than the XLB from Koi Palace!) and the vegetable dumplings provide an array of textures as mushrooms, thin bean noodles, Japanese cabbage, and other goodies chopped into nanoscale bits fall apart loosely in my mouth.

hana gyoza2
Hana provides dipping sauces, but I prefer to eat my dumplings with ponzu and a super hot red pepper. I can literally eat these in the dozens. I love the feeling of the dough slipping around on my tongue and how it resists my bite with just enough texture to be pleasurable. I much prefer my dumplings boiled over fried for this exact reason. Boiled dumplings have that luscious, smooth skin that we all lust after as we get older and start losing that elastic youth in our skin. I can totally understand those May-December relationships after enjoying my boiled dumpling meal!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Baby Bear is very advanced now. She can actually enjoy eating fresh chilli peppers with her meals.

For those who don't know, the chili peppers that she features occasionally are very hot - they're on par with habanero.

Alice said...

Papa,

Those peppers? I laugh at them now!