Eggplant, shiitake and wakame dumplings

Some time ago I left you the recipe for the wontons wrappers which, personally, I find very versatile since you can cook it boiled, fried or steamed. It admits a wide variety of fillings, shaped and can be served with the sauce that you like the most. The kind of things that never hurt to have in the freezer to get us out of a hurry. Today we’ll see how to make eggplant, shiitake and wakame dumplings.

Shortly after publishing that post I left you a recipe to make with them, Shrimp Wontons Sichuan-Style. These are boiled and then served with a sweet, spicy sauce. Extraordinary.

Today we will cook them in a totally different way and with a vegan filling. We will fry them lightly to toast the base, add a little water and cook for a few minutes to steam. This ensures that all the pasta is cooked correctly.

A different filling.

Dumplings are usually filled with pork or shrimp. Although nowadays you can find a great variety of them and according to all the tastes and food inclinations.

Even I like meat, it’s hard to deny a good plate of Serrano ham, a tartar or sirloin… I don’t usually eat too much. Mostly I like to eat vegetables of all kinds, nuts and vegetables. Ok and cheese, which would be mine in this world if I couldn’t eat cheese every day and every hour.

That’s why almost all the recipes I leave you with tend to contain more vegetables than other types of food.

Today’s option is a combination of eggplant, shiitake, cilantro and wakame.

I love wakame, I’d eat tons. Whenever we eat Japanese food, it can’t miss a plate of this seaweed. I’m fascinated by its texture, color and flavor.

To carry out the recipe, we will sauté the eggplant with a little garlic and then add a little soy so that it impregnates both ingredients well. Once it is warm, we will add the wakame seaweed along with the chopped cilantro (feel free to add as much as you like here) and the shiitake mushrooms. We’ll mix well and have the filling ready.

You’ll see that the shiitakes I use are dehydrated. Since we like them a lot at home and we consume them a lot, we usually buy a lot of them and a part of them is dehydrated. This way I can not only preserve them in time and in perfect condition, but also enhance their flavor. In this post I’ll tell you how I do it at home. Of course you can use them fresh without any problem.

Cooking the dumplings.

A few days ago I saw the dumplings of Madeline Lu in which she decorated the base of these with sesame and then toasted in the frying pan and give them a light cooking with some water. The same way we would cook toasted dumplings at the base, but with the difference of the addition of sesame.

I really liked the idea of adding the taste of toasted sesame together with the filling and the dough, so I decided to follow this same process that she shows us in her recipe, thank you very much for this fantastic idea!

– Little paragraph – This Monday I want to share with you a song that I have heard what no one knows in my good youth times. Stereophonics “Maybe Tomorrow”, Youtube link, stunning.

To finish, sprinkle with some laminated green garlic and serve with a sauce made with soya, Sriracha and sesame oil. Or the one you prefer 😉