"dumplings" news and stories

For your lunchtime pleasure, I'm presenting a series of my favorite bento boxes. Bento are Japanese home-prepared meals served in special boxes, usually eaten for lunch at work or school. These days, bento enthusiasts from all over the world share their creations on Flickr.

Check out Oender's luscious and highly edible-looking circular bento. Clockwise from left to right we have tofu and bok choy potstickers with tofu peanut noodles on a bed of spinach, pumpkin and bean mash with a carved bok choy flower; peas, corn, and carrot coins; and mixed fruit salad with a carved apple bunny.

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Jamie Oliver is known for his super fresh, simple cooking, so it's no wonder that he says he would never cook a heavy meal for a date.

In an interview for Men's Health, the German edition of the magazine, he said that heavy foods eaten during a date won't leave much room for more, later, of you know what I mean. The thing is that Germans like heavy food, such as kloesse dumplings.

I guess that'd be like telling an American not to have steak and potatoes for the main course while on a date. But then, as this article notes, Jamie is married to a model, so maybe he knows a thing or two.

• The classic food mag gets a makeover. Here's a letter from Editor-in-Chief Barbara Fairchild explaining the new look.
• The magazine picks the best dishes of the year, including the Indulgence of the Year, the Cuisine of the Year, the Ingredient of the Year, and the Dish of the Year.
• A slideshow on how to throw the best cocktail party this holiday season.
• Radicchio is not your average green.
• The top 20 recipes of 2007.
• They also pick the best puddings.
• If you haven't seen it, check out the Bon Appetit blog.
• More recipes: Baked Apple, Raisin, and Brown Sugar Dumplings, Fried Egg and Sausage Ciabatta Breakfast Pizzas, and lots of holidays desserts.

Since the time I read that the growth hormones given to  cows seeped into their milk and meat, I have been a little more particular about the food I put in my shopping basket. When I later learned that children are reportedly entering puberty earlier and earlier, due in part to their diets, I made a solemn vow to buy as much organic food as possible. This is a somewhat selfish act on my part, I have an overbearing, precocious 8 year-old daughter and the longer I can stave off her pubescent years, the safer my sanity .

That said, it is quite expensive to buy organic. Our weekly food tab for a family of five is astronomical, due in no small part to all the products without additives. So in an effort to eat healthily and impart a good work ethic on my kids, we are purchasing a flock of chicks from a nearby ranch family. We will feed them, clean their cages, watch them live a happy eight or ten weeks in the mountain air and then we will chop off their heads, pluck their feathers and make them into soup and cordon blu. I am looking forward to seeing the little peepers, feeding them and eating fresh chicken dinners, but I am somewhat hesitant about that middle death-by-beheading part. My mother and my daughter, Cassidy, had a practice outing several weeks ago where they caught up a rooster and a couple of old hens. The owner did the chopping deed and my mother and daughter plucked the beasts. The next day we enjoyed fabulous chicken soup and dumplings, made all the better by my daughter's blow by blow account of the previous day's efforts.

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The thing that really whet my appetite about dim sum when I first tried it was an umistakable sense of being immersed in a neverending cavalcade of cart-borne deliciousness. Alas, as with all passions, this newfound chowlust abated.

That's not to say that I didn't still have my favorites after the honeymoon was over. I like har gao, with their crystalline wrappers bursting with shrimp, as much as the next guy. And I always try to save room for some creamy dou fu fa, spiked with a liberal splash of sorghum syrup to sweeten the nutty, fresh hot tofu. I'm also always on the lookout for such special dishes as fried whole shrimp showered in slivers of garlic and jalapenos. But for what seems like forever I haven't snatched up anything really new with my chopsticks.

Until last week. My longtime yum cha buddy and I were three-quarters through a meal at Manhattan's Jing Fong when a cart rolled by bearing the above delight. At first glance we were sure that this dainty pear-shaped  trio must be some type of dessert. I can't say whether we thought this because we were nearly stuffed or because they were fruit-shaped.

As you've no doubt guessed by now, there was nothing fruity about these pears. Encased within the golden crust was a savory mixture of chopped porky goodness. Oh, about those stems, they're stems all right – cilantro stems.