For lunch, Bill and I had savory tang yuen. As I was
getting the ingredients together, the phone rang again. It was CyraCom
International, an interpreter service out of Tucson, Arizona. Even
when I don't log on, the calls come through automatically as I am their
only Toisanese interpreter on the roster. Most of the calls are from hospitals
and immigration at ports-of-entry. By the end, I was pretty distracted.
This always creates problems.
Turning back to make lunch, I reached blindly into the
pantry for the glutinous rice flour to make the dumplings. The daikon was
julienned and boiled. What a foul smell, but oh so essential and delicious
in this soup. After removing the daikon, I dropped in the dumplings.
Half an hour later, they still hadn't floated to the top.
I took one out, cut into it, solid! I threw those out, thinking I
didn't add enough water in making the dough. The same thing happened with
the second batch. :-( Then I got the bright idea to check the date
on the flour package. Guess what . . . I had grabbed the ordinary
rice flour and not the GLUTINOUS rice flour. Even if I boiled them
for another hour, they would still not be light and chewy. LOL!
I made the new batch with the proper rice flour. This
time, the dumplings floated in just a few minutes. I added the lap cheung,
dried shrimp meat, silkened lean pork and the cooked daikon. The tang was
worth waiting for. It's one that will stick to your ribs. Bill was able
to tackle about six dumplings . . . with help from Atticus ;-)
For an added crunch, I opened my last package of "instant
jelly fish." I don't know why I love this stuff . . . rubber bands
with chili/sesame oil. Bill doesn't like them, and even Atticus turned
up his nose!
