I love dumplings

Culture and food go hand in hand. Most celebrations involve food in some way.

We are so grateful to live in a multi-cultural society in New Zealand. As parents it makes us even happier when we go to Zoya’s daycare, Lollipops Educare in Ellerslie and see that they encourage the little ones to get involved with food and culture. Last year, Zoya made me a cookie for mother’s day with a card. At Christmas she brought home green muffins. Yes, green muffins, honestly I was a bit scared to eat them.

It’s the year of the snake and hospobaby learnt a new skill she is so proud of; she made dumplings at daycare to bring in the Chinese New Year. Her teachers tell me she enjoyed eating them as much as she did making them.

Hospobaby has loved dumplings since she was 6 months old. Her first taste was at Grand Harbour’s Yum Char. She would pull out the stuffing from prawn and coriander dumplings and nibble at it. Now she shoves the whole hot dumpling into her mouth in one go. Dominion road offers some of the best dumpling houses; Barrilla and New Flavour are our favorite places to enjoy pot stickers.

When you have the time there is nothing like making your own little pudgy parcels. I grab dumpling wrappers from the Asian store or our local Fruitworld and then fill each wrapper with a scrummy filling of whatever I fancy on the day. Prawn and chives, pork, corn, chicken, spinach… stick them in the steamer and voila!

Some days are frantic. I don’t have enough time to get something going before the clock chimes 6.30. Frozen dumplings bought from the supermarket are there to rescue me. I usually buy the Asian ones and toss them in a pan with some soy sauce and garlic to jazz them up. It always makes shopping with a toddler a tad easier when they are offering tastings at the supermarket. All that food shopping makes hospobaby very hungry. She’s always keen to try something new. That’s how we ended up with a packet of Russian dumplings called Pelmeni the last time we went to do our groceries. They are almost all gone.

My mum used to always hide my veggies in my food; luckily I haven’t had to do that with Zoya. But as they say never say never. If I ever have to I reckon the dumplings would be a good place.