ediblegarnish: year of the tiger

pc. Emily

I wanted to do something a little more extravagant for Lunar New Year this year. Because it is also my and most of my friends' 30th birthday year. This feels as monumental as the year we all turned 22 around the same time Taylor Swift released "22". The first thing I was definitely going to do was make 300(ish) dumplings. Ever since I left the parental nest, I decided to co-opt CNY/LNY as my holiday. In adulthood, it (along with V-day lol) has become my favorite holiday to celebrate. I honestly couldn't even tell you the traditional ways to celebrate it. I know you're supposed to get red envelopes of moneys (family dropped the ball on this as soon as I graduated college... why the fuck is grandma still giving my baby cousins envelopes of $100 bills when I, an adult struggling to pay bills, get nothing now?), and I know you're supposed to eat a whole fish (and noodles for a long life! but who needs that). And something about hanging 福 upside down for good luck. I recently learned that apparently the third day is meant for cleaning? Also you're not supposed to work on the day of? Anyways, as you can see, I am no expert. But I am Chinese, and I did move to Wisconsin as my first expedition away from home, and I met so many frands who tolerated my desire to make them fold and eat dumplings with me once a year - for the culture. The tradition hasn't evolved much beyond just gathering to eat dumplings, but at this point, I don't think it needs to. I pulled my housemates into co-hosting what we didn't know would be the last big event we would host *single tear emoji*- a dumpling of your people party. It was such a pleasure to see everyone show up. Even the pandemic could not stop our desire to eat dumplings together outside for a lowkey LNY, but this year, we are all triple vaccinated and turning 30 (mostly) so here we go.

The vision was a dumpling tower or dumpling cake of sorts. I wanted basically a croquembouche of dumplings or wedding cake tiers of dumplings. I didn't know how else to achieve this except to build my own platform. But then I remembered I can't build things.

Warning: lots of pictures of pretty much the same thing to follow...

Enter Athena.

We sketched out an idea while wandering around an art museum in Chapel Hill. We talked about sizing and skewers and arrangement of skewers, but overall it's a pretty simplistic in concept - stacked platforms with staggered skewers to pop dumplings on like beads on a string.

And look at the final bebes! She made me THREE including one with Heritage Dump letters *sobbing emoji*

The platforms and skewers are detachable for flexibility and ease of assembly, which was designed to be reused. Moving forward, I will be putting any and all things on my new tiered platforms.

The fact that the skewers could be removed was a happy coincidence that solved one of the serving logistics I didn't know how to solve in this dumpling tower debut.

To ensure the dumplings would stay suspended and intact, I steamed them the night before and allowed them to cool to room temp. The joys of gathering around a firepit is that all things can be roasted over the fire. I tossed a cast iron pan over it knowing full well everyone would be too lazy and end up eating the dumplings at room temp anyways, but hey the option was there. The convenient part came in when upon serving, no one really knew how to tackle the dumplings, so we said to just take the whole skewer... and turn it over the fire! Dumpling kebob!

All part of the plan.

pc. Emily

The piece de resistance in my head was the cake topper. Every cake needs an accent, and a dumpling cake is no exception. Except that Athena and I did not communicate on sizing.

We discussed how each dumpling would be roughly 2in in length (give or take my human error), but it didn't occur to me to double check just how giant my giant cake topper bun should be.

I wanted to make an almost comically large bao to display. Nestled inside this golden turmeric baby is about half a pound of gingery pork and mushroom filling. The dough could've been better but I loved how it looked like a comforter when folded. To serve, I actually sliced it up into 16 pieces like a cake... or deep dish pizza.

As for the dumplings...

A cascade of shrimp and napa + XO sauce accents. Wrapped in beet powder that came out more brown than pink. My friend thought they kind of looked like butterfly cocoons, which honestly I kind of like. The twisted fold was supposed to be kind of reminiscent of little shrimpies swimming in the ocean.

A dramatic wall of classic pork and chive with a Xi'an spice mix. Wrapped in charcoal wrappers and folded in my "classic" way - the way that I learned to fold from my parents and the way I teach any and all dumpling beginners.

Garnishes of mushroom, tofu, and napa with dobanjiang. Wrapped in spinach wrappers to convey the obvious - this is a vegetarian dumpling. And if that wasn't clear enough, braided the way I learned from @littlefatboyfrankie (when his work first blew me away) because they look like little leaves.