Shitake and Chard Dumplings

Last September, our mother flew up with my brother, Warren, on a budget airline -- the only one that offers direct flights between LAX and our little town up here in Western Washington.

Our mom is the wonton lady. Whenever she shows up anywhere, she pulls out a foil-wrapped package of thawed wonton wrappers from the best dumpling place in Chinatown. Then, she'll ask if you have any pork, ginger, garlic and scallions (which of course you do, having prepared for her arrival) and gets going like a productive elf until the dining room table is covered with cornstarch-dusted trays of dumplings.

Flo is what we call our mom, mostly behind her back because even though she has an "American" name (Florence), she has always hated it. As her evil spawn, we get a (juvenile) kick out of freely throwing about the name she always complains about people using -- even though when people ask, she tells them, with a smile, that her name is Florence.

Dumplings: edible clouds.

"How was the trip with Flo?" I asked Warren.

He rolled his eyes then explained what had happened.

In her suitcase, Flo had packed frozen homemade wontons -- not just the frozen skins, but the actual dumplings, pork filling and all. Being oblivious during the check-in process since after over forty years in this country, her grasp of the English language is barely functional at best, she had allowed Warren to do the talking while she stood off to the side.

Warren and I long ago agreed, after seeing a photo of Nelson Mandela, the South African leader and icon, that our mother bore a striking resemblance to him -- only more Chinese. We thought it was probably the similar haircut, the close-cropped, graying frizz perched on the top of her head. I pictured her now at the airline ticketing counter staring dreamily away with her Nelson Mandela hairdo, her small hands pushed into the pockets of the nubby maroon sweater she wears almost every day.

After Warren thunked Flo's black bag onto the scale, the airline agent immediately declared it overweight. He stated that there would be an additional charge of $50. My brother is the perfect example of the good Chinese son. Rather than make his mother remove some of the clumps of frozen meat and dough from her bag, he paid the fee. Filial duty reigned.

“Fifty dollars?” I was appalled for him. “Why didn’t you make her take it out?”

He let out what resembled a half groan, half laugh.

See, not to sound disrespectful, but our mother was never much of a cook. Our childhood memories of her efforts in the kitchen lean toward images of soggy food and things with burnt edges. Maybe it had something to do with her being a single mom who worked as a sweatshop seamstress twelve hours a day. It didn't leave much time for her to think about cooking.

She only turned into the wonton lady once we became grownups and moved away from home. She began traveling to us for extended visits that would inevitably turn into wonton making extravaganzas. Even though we now eat her wontons, which are certainly good, we still approach them with remnants of our childhood skepticism.

For the rest of the trip, Warren and I referred to the foil-wrapped lumps as “the fifty-dollar wontons.” As in, “Do you want to eat some fifty-dollar wontons?” Then, we would laugh.

We didn’t tell our mother about it. She would not have found any of it amusing, especially since she has a belief that if you wrap something in foil and shove it into your luggage, no one will know it is there; it won’t even show up on the airport X-ray machine. She explained this to me once with utter conviction. I didn't argue. We all need to have things to believe in. 

Wontons are not supposed to weigh you down. With a small piece of filling surrounded generously by paper thin dumpling skin, a wonton is meant to float in a bowl of broth as weightlessly as a cloud. When you eat a wonton, you are as the name itself explains, swallowing a cloud.

Won, cloud. Ton, to swallow.

These shitake and chard dumplings float ethereally while offering flavors that are entirely of the earth. If our mother's wontons provide us children with a solid reminder of who we are and where we come from, perhaps my dumplings speak more of what we have moved toward, or even become. We may seem a little lighter, but our burdens are different: we are the next generation.

I'll make these for Flo the next time she is here.

The next generation eating dumplings...

Shitake and Chard Dumplings

Makes about 40.

Ingredients
12 ounces shitake (or a mix of shitake and button) mushrooms, cleaned, stems removed, caps minced
1 bunch chard, stems removed and leaves thinly sliced
1-2 tablespoons of neutral oil, such as sunflower
Handful of sun-dried tomatoes
3 green onions
1 garlic clove
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 1/2 teaspoon sesame oil, plus more to finish the dish
Salt and white pepper, to taste

Store-bought square wonton wrappers, the thinner the better

1 1/2 quarts of homemade or store-bought vegetable or chicken broth

Instructions
Cover tomatoes with hot water while prepping mushrooms, chard, onions, garlic. Meanwhile, heat oil over medium heat in a large pan. Add chard and saute until wilted. Remove from pan and press chard with the back of a wooden spoon, draining away the liquid. Allow chard to cool.

Remove softened tomatoes from water and squeeze lightly then dice. In a large bowl combine mushroom mince, tomatoes, onions, garlic, chard, soy sauce, sesame oil, salt and pepper.

Prepare a baking tray: dust lightly with cornstarch. Add a small amount of water to a bowl for dipping your fingers in while folding the dumplings.

Place a teaspoon or so of filling in the center of a wonton wrapper. Wet fingertip and run a long two edges and then fold skin over to form a triangle. Press to seal tightly to prevent filling from spilling out into your broth. Again, it's very important that you have a good, tight seal.

From here, dumplings may be placed on prepped sheets so that they do not touch, dusted with an additional bit of cornstarch, and placed in the freezer. Freeze for at least 2 hours, then place in freezer bags to store.

For cooking: Bring pot of water to boil. Heat broth in a separate pot. Place dumplings in boiling water for 1-2 minutes. Gently remove with a slotted spoon, placing them into heated broth for another minute. Serve in bowls with chopped green onions or cilantro. Drizzle with sesame oil.

Tahini Oat Butter Cookies

“Just feed, satisfy, nourish. Enter each activity thoroughly, freshly, vitally. Splash! There is completely no secret: just plunging in, allowing time, making space, giving energy, tending each situation with warm-hearted effort. The spoon, the knife, the food, the hunger: broken plates and broken plans. Play, don’t work. Work it out.”
— Edward Espe Brown, Tassajara Cooking

Cookie thievery runs rampant around here...

I have a thing for monastery cookbooks, specifically those of the Buddhist variety. I don't own many, just a few obtained as gifts or at second-hand bookstores. Of the ones I do have, I find the dishes in them to be honest and sustaining, exactly what you need for the long haul, whether you're sitting zazen for hours or spending an afternoon picking up toys before cleaning the rest of the house.

Some of the best food I have ever eaten was years ago when I attended my first silent meditation retreat while a graduate student in psychology. The three-day retreat was at an old boy scout camp in the San Gabriel Mountains forty miles east of Los Angeles. It was part of a Buddhism course I was enrolled in, and most of the attendees were my fellow classmates. I welcomed the experience as a break from the chaotic day-to-day of my life which was packed with school, clinical training activities and a job at a hospital.  

There were certain rules we were required to follow during the retreat. The main one left us wondering how we would manage:  no contact - neither by voice nor via the eyes. We were permitted contact only by writing down questions for our teacher and submitting them in a box located in the dining hall. Our teacher would make time each afternoon to answer each student's question individually. Other than this, we met as a group once a day and the teacher would provide a talk on various aspects of Buddhism.

Another of the first lessons we learned about was the Zen Buddhist tradition of using three bowls for every meal. We were directed to a shelf on one of the walls in the dining hall, on which sat cloth-wrapped sets, one per attendee. The largest of the three bowls represented the Buddha's head and knowledge.

Individual responsibility at a Zen monastery: three bowls, a spoon and a pair of chopsticks wrapped up in a cloth.

This was a student's form of the traditional oryioki, an elaborate meal ritual practiced by monks in China and Japan for a thousand years, transmitted through individuals and presented to us now in the form of a choice. Pick a set, remember which one you chose, and be responsible for keeping it clean. We were instructed to wash and wrap up our bowls and utensils after each meal and return them to the shelf, ready for the next time.  

Meditation practice began each day after we were woken at 5:30 by the sound of wooden blocks being clapped together by an intrepid volunteer. In the zendo, a long wooden building with platforms on which we sat in meditation three times a day, my head was cluttered with the noise of everything I thought I had left at the bottom of the mountain.

Slowly, the disorder and haze began to clear and I learned that thoughts were like passing visitors you greeted as they approached. It was simple, really. Acknowledge their presence, then let them continue on their way. This was the first time I realized that such a feat was actually possible. I didn't have to be held in the grip of a thought or worry. They could still exist as distant acquaintances, but I didn't have to be friends with them.

It might seem strange to say that the other thing I remember most strongly about the retreat experience is eating utterly delicious food in the dining hall. The foods the monks cooked for us were entirely vegetarian and free of dairy, which our teacher had explicitly requested, to cut down on noises such as throat clearing during our long sits in the zendo.

In the dining hall, everyone around me was engaged in the task of eating in complete silence. Yet each time I sat down with my fellow attendees, my own inner quietude was smashed to pieces by the thoughts boomeranging around my head. Thoughts such as, "God. How did they make this squash soup? It is amazing! I wonder if I can get the recipe. But how do I ask? Can I put note in the box? Is that allowed?"

Some meditation student I was!

By the end of the experience, I learned that "noise" is normal. But, when we take time to retreat from it briefly and limit contact with one another by being more tuned in to ourselves, the result is that we feel the presence of others so much more keenly. Indeed, as the retreat wound down, I was left with an even deeper sense of connectedness to other people and the larger world (so maybe it is good to take intermittent breaks from social media?).

And now, I have on my kitchen shelf a variety of monastery cookbooks, many with recipes featuring wacky measurements (like 5/8 of a cup? Does anyone own a 5/8 measure cup, or even an eighth? Are these measurements the recipe writer's ode to the Zen koan?).

Recently when I was flipping through one of my old Tassajara cookbooks, I came across a recipe for a tahini cookie and decided to make these. The recipe is inspired by Tassajara but is adapted from one of Alice Medrich's gems.

It may look like a Plain Jane, but this is one of the best sweets you'll ever eat. I promise. She's a delicate gal of a cookie -- crumbly and full of nutty flavor from the tahini. Oat and white rice flours surprisingly push the butter flavor to the fore.

This is also a recipe with some wacky volume measurements, but the weight measurements will provide you with safe guidance if you prefer to go that route. Whichever you decide to use, enjoy the journey and of course the final product. And here's a little Buddhist-ish tip for you: don't get so attached to your first batch that you become upset when it is gone. Remember, our existence is transient -- and as far as these cookies go, you can always make more.

Tahini Oat Butter Cookies

Makes 16 2 1/2" cookies.

Ingredients
3/4 cup plus 1 1/4 teaspoons of oat flour (70 g)
2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons white rice flour (28 g)
1/8 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/16 teaspoon baking powder (really, a small pinch)
1/3 cup granulated sugar (65 g)
4 tablespoons unsalted butter (56 g), softened
1/4 cup tahini (60 g)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment.

Whisk together flours, salt, baking soda, and sugar. Combine tahini and vanilla. Work tahini mixture and butter into the dry ingredients. It's best to use the tools the Maker gave you and just mix everything together with your hands. You will have a soft, pliable dough.

From here, you can roll it into a log (about 1" in diameter) and place it in the fridge to rest and firm up for 2 hours. This allows the flours to fully absorb the liquids. Then, slice (1/4") and bake. The log keeps well in the fridge for three days. You can also put it in the freezer if you can't get to it right away.

To bake these right away, roll dough into 1-inch balls, place on your prepared sheet and flatten the dough with the bottom of a glass. Bake for 25 minutes until just barely golden.

Cool cookies fully on the pan or lift the entire parchment sheet of cookies and place on a wire cooling rack.

Enjoy!

p.s. For a variation, try adding a couple of teaspoons of instant coffee or espresso powder to your cookie dough. Add more or less, according to your own preference.