Asian Chicken N Dumplings Five Spice Chicken Noodle And Shiitake Dumplings

 

Ming Tsai

Serves 6+  
 

This is good, but a bit of work

Ingredients

    • 1 free range chicken, 3 to 4 pounds
    • 1 teaspoon five-spice powder
    • 1 tablespoon soy sauce
    • 8 slices ginger
    • 6 scallions, cut into 2-inch pieces
    • 1 medium zucchini, turned into ‘spaghetti’ (See Note)
    • 1 medium peeled carrot, turned into ‘spaghetti’ (See Note)
    • Salt and white pepper, to taste

 

Shiitake Dumplings

  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 4 tablespoons oil
  • 2+ cups sifted all-purpose flour (see note)
  • 4 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
  • 1/4 cup chopped parsley (save half for garnish)
  • 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro
  • 1 tablespoon minced fresh thyme
  • 2 tablespoons sauteed sliced scallions
  • 1/2 cup sauteed and minced shiitake mushrooms

Directions

 In a large stock pot, place chicken in and cover with cold water.  Add five-spice, soy, ginger and scallions. Bring to a slow boil and simmer for 20 minutes only. Cover pot tightly, seal with foil, turn off heat and let steep for 1 hour. Season with salt and white pepper. Carefully remove chicken from bones and shred by hand. Add chicken back to strained broth. Keep hot. Add zucchini and carrot ‘spaghetti’ to hot soup 3 minutes before serving. Check for seasoning. Ladle the soup and ‘spaghetti’ over the hot dumplings. Garnish with chopped parsley.

Make the dumplings: In a small bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk and oil. In a mixing bowl, mix together flour, baking powder, salt, pepper, half of the parsley, cilantro, thyme, scallions and shiitakes. With the paddle on low speed, slowly add the egg mixture till it comes together. Do not over work the dough. Let mix stand for 30 minutes. Using floured hands, form small dumplings about the size of golf balls. (Test 1 small dumpling first for seasoning.) In a pot of boiling, salted water add the dumplings in 1 at a time and cook thoroughly, about 6 to 8 minutes. Take dumplings out of strainer and place in large heated soup bowls.

Notes

The dumplings don’t work as this recipe is written. They fall apart in the water. I added a good 1/4 cup more flour and then throughly rolled them in flour before dropping into the boiling water. That seemed to work. Next time I’m going to look up a dumpling recipe and add the stuff from this recipe to it.

I bought the Japanese tool that Ming used in this recipe to make the “spaghetti” in Japantown for like $50 the first time I made this recipe. It works nicely, but makes the soup a little hard to eat as the vegetables are very long strands. I usually just shave the veggies with my peeler and sliced them into fettuccine sized lengths.