Each country has its favorite food, which identifies its specific culture, for example, talk about hot dogs, you will immediately picture the United States of America, though you can buy hot dogs in other countries as well, but it reflects the food habits of the Americans.
In the same way dumplings are the staple food of the Chinese culture and reflect its food habits. They are made of flour, baking powder and salt, sometimes sugar is also added.The mixture is kneaded with enough water. When the dough ready, it is divided into small balls, the balls are rolled out in different shapes and filled with fillings of cooked meat, pork, chicken or meat, or vegetables, and fried or steamed. Dumplings are bite size food and are available in all corners of the world. Dumpling Kingdom a flourishing Chinese restaurant has dumpling fillings of beef, seafood, and pork and chicken. For vegetarians, they have vegetables fillings. If you are living in Boston and want to eat dumpling, you will get the best choice in Dumpling Boston, steamed or fried, sometimes served in typical Chinese soup. The variety of dumplings you can get is mind boggling, they come with chive filling, with lobster, shrimp, port and cucumber fillings, they have a red wrapper or cuttlefish ink wrapper. The best part of eating dumplings are they are not very expensive are so filling. Each restaurant has its own dumpling specialty, dumplingkingdom has spinach dumpling, along with dumplings which are pan fried and have pork or leek fillings. Their pork soup with small dumplings taste heavenly.
Chinese dumplings come in two shapes, crescent and round dumplings which look like a purse; crescent shaped are called gao in Chinese and purse shaped ones are known as bao. Same type of dumpling have different names, depending on the location, they have Sechzuan or Cantonese names. Dumplings are also given different names, depending on the type of wrapper, and how they cooked, steamed, boiled or fried.
Dumplings are made in other countries as well, in Nepal, Tibet and India they are called Momo, in Turkey they are called Manti and are served with garlic, melted butter and red pepper topping along with yogurt. Czech dumplings have fruit fillings, are usually covered with melted butter and sugar before serving, sometimes they have toppings of cheese, poppy seeds or breadcrumbs nicely browned and fried. One can write a whole book on dumplings, what they taste like, how they are made, their different shapes and methods of cooking, steaming, frying or backing, the different types of fillings and how they are served topped with melted butter, sugar, or pepper.
If one has to the immediate urge to eat dumplings, but cannot go to the restaurant where they are served, there is no need to despair, many places have the dumpling delivery service, you order them on phone, either pay them online using your credit card or pay the delivery man and enjoy eating them in the comfort of your home.
