Preparing Chinese dumplings is one of those time consuming, but time well spent types of activities. Some of my fondest memories cooking with my family revolve around a pile of dumpling wrappers and a bowl of filling, my sisters and I crimping edges together to form perfect parcels of ground meat and napa cabbage. Years ago, my family went into a health kick and switched from pork to turkey for the filling, but as I continued to make these on my own in college, I began to play with pork, again.

It’s certainly a process. Care needs to be taken in vegetable selection/prep because it needs to be cooked through in the short cooking time. Additionally, you have to watch for water content, as is the case here with using napa cabbage. Many vegetables are well over 90% water by volume, so naturally they’ll expel this water in the cooking process. By thinly slicing the cabbage and tossing with some salt, it draws a lot of the water out. What remains is a slightly dehydrated product that can be finely chopped and incorporated into the filling mixture without contributing too much juice.

For this particular filling, a half pound each of ground pork and chopped shrimp are combined with the napa cabbage in a large bowl. Add an egg, 1 tbsp grated ginger, 2 tbsp finely chopped scallions, 1 tbsp sesame oil and 1 tbsp dry sherry. Then sprinkle a pinch of salt over the top and mix very thoroughly, preferably by hand.

The crimping is the tricky part, but completes the presentation. There are numerous ways to go about doing this, but when using thin store-bought wrappers, I find the pleats to be both attractive and manageable. Wrappers made with homemade dough tend to be a little thicker, more elastic and less likely to hold that shape (but they taste better). Here’s a dude with a sexy British accent showing how to crimp gyoza, the Japanese word for dumplings. He goes from one end to the other. My technique starts from the center and goes outward on one end and then the other, like a pouch. Or a pooch. And here’s apparently how British people like to crimp, in general.

If you want to freeze them, do so on a sheet pan in a single layer with spacing in between. Wait several hours until they’re completely frozen and then you can transfer them to a bag to save some space. Make sure it’s a deep freeze or they will begin to clump into a giant block and it’ll be an awful mess when you want to use them. They’ll keep for months, but beware the freezer burn. The thin and dry nature of store bought wrappers can become delicate and brittle. Just watch out for that.

And then for the frying bit. This technique is an all-in-one “steaming” and frying method. A flat non-stick pan really helps, here. No wok nonsense. Oil the pan well and set on high heat. Place the dumplings on the pan, flat side down, pleats up. Let them toast for less than a minute, then add a 2:1 mixture of water to rice vinegar (just water will do, too) so it reaches half the height of the dumplings. Cover immediately and watch for when the steam stops billowing out the sides (a few minutes), at which point you take the lid off. If you’re working with frozen dumplings, you’ll have to repeat the last step with the water. If not, lower the heat to medium and wait for the remaining water to evaporate off and the dumplings to begin frying, again.

Use this lower heat to start loosening the dumplings and checking the bottoms to see how brown they’re becoming. Sacrifice one and open it up if you have to in order to check for doneness. Cooking times can be pretty variable depending on how rapidly the water evaporated and how much filling you’ve used per dumpling, but after just a minute or two of frying on medium, they should be done.

Enjoy with your favorite soy-based sauce or hot sauce. Or, my sauce, which I’m too lazy to include in this post, so I’ll have another post coming, just on sauces.

I’m no tomato aficionado. I know the difference between a beefsteak, a cherry and an heirloom. I know that you’re not supposed to refrigerate the delicate fruits, else they risk becoming mealy. I know that growing them requires a shit ton of sunlight and water. And I read enough articles and marketing to know that cooking tomatoes decreases the amount of vitamin C present, but as a trade-off increases the levels of antioxidants and lycopene, a cancer and disease fighting carotenoid. I am, if anything, chock full of knowledge, but for all practical purposes, I’m not so well versed in preparing tomatoes in cooked food.

They are so ubiquitous in Italian-American cuisine that I never think to myself that I want to use them. In my Chinese family’s home, we rarely considered tomatoes. It wasn’t until a few years ago in college that I came across a recipe for panzanella, a bread salad, that I put some thought into the types of tomatoes I desired. After experimenting with several recipes, that bright ripe, juicy tomato tossed with olive oil, basil and slightly toasted bread came to symbolize the heat of late summer.

And then I read about caramelizing tomatoes. By partially submerging them in a bath of red wine vinegar and olive oil (approx 1:6) and adding some sugar, thyme and salt and pepper, they transform rather dramatically. After just 2-3 hours in the oven at 275F, supple globes of red flesh bob in the oil and collapse at the subtle pressure of a fork. Hot juices and seeds gush out and mix with the fragrant oil and vinegar. What you’ve effectively created here is a topping for pizza, a base for bruschetta, and a rich sauce for dipping, topping and/or sopping.

This is precisely what I’ve done. One night I used the tomatoes for topping pizzas at a friend’s make-your-own pizza party. I saved the juices and the next night, I reused them to caramelize more tomatoes. Those were used in tandem with basil chiffonade on thinly sliced tri-tip steak. Delicious. And then finally, I reused the juices once again for a third time with the last of the tomatoes, and rather than separate them from the juice/oil/vinegar mixture, I left them there. I transferred everything to a pan, crushed the globes, added minced garlic and some pats of butter, and then reduced everything to a veritable tomato sauce. To this I tossed some barely al dente spinach tagliatelle and chopped parsley.

I started this only with the intent of caramelizing tomatoes for pizza. After realizing that the sauce could go so much further, magical things ensued, and that’s what’s so fun about improvising in the kitchen. I don’t mean that everything saved will pan out in the future. I have several containers sitting in the fridge filled with the juices from all sorts of roasted or braised animals, and I’m convinced that they’ll come in handy for some random dish. It hasn’t happened yet. Or maybe I’m betraying my method- I shouldn’t wait for the opportunity to use them. The opportunity is here and now, and I should find a reason the next time I walk through the market.