Heirloom Recipes for Mother's Day on Food52
Hsiao-Ching Chou
From our May 2, 2015, potsticker cooking class at Hot Stove Society in Seattle. Photo/Hien Duong.
It was so cool to be asked to submit a post for Food52's celebration of heirloom recipes for Mother's Day.
I have been making dumplings at my mother’s side for the past thirty years. I first learned how to fill the wrappers and pleat them shut when I was in grade school. In my teens, I learned how to make the dough and roll the skins. Before I graduated college and left home for my first job, I had to be able to make a batch of potstickers (pan-fried dumplings) from beginning to end as a test of my skills—and to reassure my father that, some day, when I met my future husband, I would be able to feed him. They weren’t pretty in the beginning, but my technique evolved over the years; thousands of dumplings taught my fingers the nuances of the dough.