I only really discovered Japanese food a year a go and fell in love, my friend introduced me to it and she is obsessed with gyoza dumplings (pot stickers), so I wanted to try and make some my self at home. I was looking on sous-chef.co.uk and saw they sold dumpling flour and ordered it, (I wanted them to be as perfect as possible) I started making the dough and filling and was surprised at how simple they are to make at home, the pleating of the wrappers was my favourite part, it was a lot easier that I thought it would be and after 2 or three I was knocking them out at speed like a Japanese grandmother lol. the filling is made with pork, soy sauce, yellow zucchini, spring onions, ginger and sesame oil. I bet they would be great with chicken too. the Japanese shop near me only sell them filled with pork so I thought I would stick to a flavour I knew rather than experimenting, I was going to use Asian cabbage but I couldn’t find any so a yellow zucchini worked well in its place.

recipe for dough

• 4 cups dumpling flour (tipo 00 pasta flour will also work too)
• 1 and 1/4 cup water
• 1/2 tsp salt

dissolve the salt in the water and add to flour and ix together and knead thoroughly, let rest for 10 minutes and divide into 4 portions, using a pasta roller I rolled out the dough into long thin strips then used a cookie cutter to cut circles

for filling

• 1 pound pork mince
• thumb sized piece of ginger
• 1 small yellow zucchini
• 2 spring onions
• 3 tbsp. soy sauce
• 2 tbsp. sesame oil
• 1 tbsp shiro miso paste

grate the ginger and zucchini and mix in with the pork in a large bowl. chop the spring onions and green parts finely and add to the pork mixture then mix in the soy sauce and sesame oil and miso, season with salt and pepper, spoon small mounds of filling into the centre of the dumpling wrappers and pleat edges together (see video and photos) lightly oil pan with some sesame oil and place the dumplings in the pan, let sit for about 2 minutes to get some colour on the bottoms then add 1/2 cup of water and put the lid straight onto the pan and leave for 5 minutes, until the water has dissolved, remove the lid and leave to stand for 1 more minute then toss around the pan and tip out onto plate. serve with soy sauce