Eric

Gracias mucho for taking me around Antigua. I came back from one week in Guatemala with more influencer pictures of myself than I've taken in my entire life thanks to Eric. If any of ya'll love to go out dancing and need an ig bf, he's the one! Eric identifies as Mexican, and I'm pretty positive I met him at Bo's old apartment.

I decided to pop down to Antigua over Thanksgiving since I had nothing better to do and when else am I going to know someone living in Antigua? And in my overly ambitious activities brain, I thought I'd have time to make Eric's dumplings during my visit. I fantasized about ideating and shopping for produce based on availability at the local mercado and then spending a lowkey night in cooking together. And then we climbed a volcano and I was like uhm nevermind.

It all worked out in the end though because Eric had to come back to the Bay for work, and I was excited to actually execute on my p o z o l e soup dumplings.

Me slanging mini pozole soup dumplings over to Bochee's for family dinner like the good Asian auntie I aspire to be:

Me being v proud of these platters of radish blankets:

This was my first time making soup dumplings, and they are definitely not traditional:

I cheated for time though and used gelatin. And then I prepped two iterations since we have some veggies among us - omitting pork and using agar instead of gelatin in the filling.

In case you didn't already know, soup dumplings get their characteristic soupy filling from a gelatinous, collagen-rich broth that's set into a bone broth jell-o before being mixed into a gingery ground pork filling. Usually you make this meaty jelly with neck bones and pork skin, but for these guys, I made a pozole soup and reduced it down into a pozole... concentrate. Vegetarian of course, so that I could split it later to dissolve unflavored gelatin in half and agar agar in the other half.

Would it surprise you to know you can build an entire career on gelatin? I used to work at a gelatin company. This magical ingredient is a protein that basically holds water really really well. Which is what allows it to form a gel. And if you consider all the foods that are gels or on the gel.. spectrum, that's a lot of things that could use gelatin. Not all gelling agents create equal gels though. Gelatin gels are especially lovely because they are colorless and transparent, and they are thermoreversible, meaning they can melt and reform. Even more, they melt close to our body temperature, which gives gelatin-containing products a delightful mouthful. Different types of gelatin are described by a Bloom strength which tells you about how strong the formed gel is. Beyond making wiggly jiggly colorful water gels, gelatin can be used to thicken things or stick things together.

Put another way: Besides in jell-o shots, people take advantage of gelatin's properties to stabilize marshmallows, ice cream, cheesecakes, yogurt, and mousse. It's used in glues, photographic films, pharmaceuticals (capsules), wine or juice clarification, cosmetics, and tissue engineering applications.

Entire companies are built around extracting and finding applications for gelatin, and we already have so many great uses (and need) for it - so why bother with anything else?

It's derived from the bones and skin of cows, pigs, and fish of course. And various dietary, religious, and cultural restrictions might require you to stay vigilant about what products do or do not contain gelatin.

Hydrocolloids describes the entire family of molecules (ingredients) that hold water really really well. They are largely plant- or seaweed-derived polysaccharides - with gelatin being the only animal protein. But like I said, not all gelling agents create equal gels. Gelatin alternatives are deliberately chosen depending on the application. Sometimes blends of different hydrocolloids are required. I know I'm approaching this from a gelatin-centric POV, but that's because it is crucial to the mechanics and delightfulness of a soup dumpling. When steamed, the bits of bone broth jellies melt and pool in the delicate wrapper, waiting to burst out and spray all over your face if you don't know the proper way to eat a little soup dumpling. If I had more time to gather and play around with ingredients, I would've chosen carrageenan (instead of agar) as the vegetarian counterpart. This is because (certain types of) carrageenan makes a softer, more elastic gel more similar to gelatin.. that melts at a lower temperature than agar, which makes a harder, more brittle gel.

But all in all, I love the way these guys turned out. Filled with pork, a lot of garlic, a lot of hominy, and cabbage. With a lime-y cilantro dip to provide the vinegar component that I always need with my dumplings.

We also got my first formerly recorded review of a heritage dumpling from the dumpling-ee: these dumplings take my back to my childhood... I can almost hear my mom yelling at me in the kitchen. *bows deeply* Thank you, thank you.

And then we leveled it up by pulling out the Valentina.

Things I would do differently: make a richer gelatinous broth with animals for the meaties, add some hominy cooking juice + maybe roast some hominy for the veggies.

Eric's complete list:

fruit with tajin (mango, watermelon, etc)

durros (fried pinwheels) with lime and chile from the raspado man, a staple after church Sundays

abuelita's hot chocolate with pan dulce

pozole and tamales for special occasions

Side note:

Did some light pozole research at Nido's backyard...

Honestly there was no way this wasn't going to be good because it was so cold.

...and El Patio [not pictured]

Which was more memorable to me, especially the leftovers that I had for second dinner with a cheese crusty quesadillas.