Since I got better, I've been cooking mostly steamed dishes with my donabe steamer, "Mushi Nabe", every day. The more I use it, the more I love this donabe. Sometimes, I make just one dish with it, but I normally make multiple dishes in this donabe, everything on the dining table, for a meal.
I've been making a lot of dumplings (steam gyoza, shumai, etc.) in this donabe, too. This time, I put a little extra work to make Har Gow (shrimp dumplings) from very scratch.
For the skin, I brought back high quality wheat starch from Japan. To make Har Gow skin, for the almost translucent skin, you use wheat starch, instead of wheat flour. First, combine 100 g wheat starch and 20 g potato starch in a bowl. Pour 150 ml boiling water into the bowl and stir quickly by a wooden spatula. Once the mixture becomes one piece, take it out to a work surface with 30 g potato starch. Knead by hand for good 5 minutes until the dough is nicely elastic. Make it into 2 logs by hand and cut them into 20 pieces. Roll out each piece into a round skin.
For the filling, mince 10 oz shrimp and combine with 1tsp grated ginger, 1T sake, 1/2 tsp raw brown sugar, 1/2T shio-koji (or 1/2 tsp salt), 1tsp sesame oil, and 1/2T potato starch. Let the mixture rest in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
The filling was wrapped with the skins.
In the donabe steamer, they were steamed over medium-high heat for about 6 minutes.
My donabe-steamed Har Gow tasted incredible. The skin was nicely chewy and the filling was so savory.
Happy donabe life.
