Dumpling Filling

Dumpling filling is just what it sounds like: a thing you make to put in dumplings. I’ll be covering the dumplings themselves in a separate post. I make dumpling filling with two basic ingredients – textured vegetable protein and a veggie. Kale is the best veggie I’ve tried for the purpose, but other greens would work too, and for this example, I used chopped broccoli.

I boiled it. In theory, you could roast it, but you want a nice moist result for your dumpling filling: it’s the water in the filling that cooks the wrappers, if you fry rather than boil the dumplings. Reserve the cooking liquid. Measure out the same volume of water as you plan to use of TVP (for instance, if you want a cup of TVP, measure out a cup of the vegetable’s cooking liquid.) Add Better than Bouillon and the herbs and spices of your choice.

Bring it back to a boil and then dump it in a bowl with your measured amount of TVP. Stir it up to make sure every one of the flakes is incorporated.

Let that sit for a while, and then mix up the TVP and the vegetable. You can taste it at this point and see if you put in enough herbs and spices, and add more if you didn’t.

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Cream of Green Soup

This is an example of a soup I made up on the fly. Much as with the bean corn lime soup, you begin by sautéeing celery and onion:

I used a combination of canola oil and butter. When it was fried to my satisfaction, I added water and a wide variety of green frozen veggies:

I used broccoli, peas, spinach, kale, green beans, and zucchini and cooked ‘em. Then I threw in some Better than Bouillon and green spices (parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme, yes really, plus dillweed – and salt and white pepper, which are not green, but what can you do? I would have added chives but it did not occur to me.)

Now to mess with the texture. Again, like the bean corn lime soup, this soup is thickened with a purée of its ingredients. I ladled some of the liquid and vegetables into the beaker for my hand blender and blended them.

Added back to the soup, it made a delightfully thick and chunky consistency out of what was previously water with vegetables floating in it.

Just to make this all even healthier, I added a handful of soy flakes (textured vegetable protein). I didn’t reconstitute them first – I let them pull their hot liquid out of the surrounding soup as I stirred them in and it continued to cook.

Then, because I thought of the name “cream of green”, I turned it into a cream soup by – predictably enough – adding cream to it.

It’s not that pretty a soup, I will admit, but it tastes really good.

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Roasted Broccoli

Behold, a humble crown of broccoli.

But it is raw and boring. That will never do. Preheat the oven to 425º. Butcher your vegetable. If you must wash it (which, probably, you must) then dry it very thoroughly first. Putting wet broccoli in the oven isn’t that different from steaming it.

My weapons of choice. Your arsenal may vary. The salt is essential. One of the containers labeled white pepper is actually onion powder. (The onion powder container broke, and what was not spilled onto the floor was transferred into a saved white pepper container.) Add also an oil with a high smoke point. I used olive oil; canola would be another good choice.

Hacked up and arranged broccoli…

And after, tossed with spices and oil.

Into the oven with it for fifteen to twenty minutes, or until the tips have gotten brown and crispy.

Add some shredded parmesan or similar cheese like so, if desired. A squirt of lemon juice, a sprinkle of citrus zest, any spices you were too easy on, any fresh herbs you did not care to subject to the heat, more salt if you taste it and deem it necessary, maybe a little butter just to make the entire thing even more decadent. Enjoy.

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