Ground Turkey Gyoza

I thought that after I got the Seigen restaurant review off of my chest I would give you the first recipe in the "Cats-up" series. But here I am, sidetracked yet again.

This week I received the following request from my childhood friend Michele: "I need new inspirations for chicken dishes and asian noodle dishes that aren't ramen." So Michele, this one is for you. I'm not sure if you've tried it yet, but I recently made wildly successful gyoza (pot stickers) using ground turkey (you can use ground chicken, too). This recipe is perfect for those of you like Michele who don't eat four-legged animals. They were as good as, if not better than, the traditional kind made with pork.

Ingredients: (This recipe makes at least 50 pot stickers, probably more)

• 1-1/4 lb. ground turkey
• gyoza wrappers (make sure they're not previously frozen, they'll stick together)
  
• green onions, chopped
• chives, chopped
• cabbage, chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 egg
• a splash of shoyu
• a splash of water
  
• a tiny drizzle of sesame seed oil (be careful, its flavor is very strong)
• salt, pepper, and garlic powder

Just mix up all of the ingredients except the wrappers in a big bowl. Then spoon a little bit of the filling (don't over-fill because your gyoza will burst when you cook them) onto the wrapper. Wet the edge of one half of the wrapper with water, then fold it over the filling and pinch it closed.

To cook them, heat a little bit of canola oil in a frying pan or a high-sided skillet on medium high heat. Place the gyoza in the pan in a single layer. Add some water (1/2-2/3 cup should be enough) and cover the pan. Cook until the water has evaporated (if you're not sure about the cooking time, cooking longer won't hurt . . . it's better to err on the side of caution when cooking raw poultry. And there's no such thing as over-cooking ground turkey. The texture holds). Last, take the cover off and let the gyoza fry, flipping once. They should be golden brown.



What to do if you make more than you can eat in one sitting (and you probably will):

• Gyoza freezes well. Just lay the raw gyoza in a single layer on a baking sheet and stick it in the freezer for about 45 minutes. This step is necesary because if you dump them all in a bag when they're fresh, they'll get stuck together. After that, you can put them in a ziploc freezer bag and keep them in the freezer for up to three months.

• Leftovers are best in soup. This last picture shows what I did with my frozen gyoza two weeks after I made them. I made a quick soup of boxed chicken stock, water, shoyu, salt, pepper, and a drop of sesame oil. I dropped the gyoza in, then let the soup come to a boil. I let it continue to boil until the gyoza float to the top--that's when you know they're done. You can also add noodles or veggies to this to make it a hearty meal.

Seigen: Kyoto, Japan

There's a tiny restaurant in Kyoto that I keep meaning to tell you about. It's called Seigen, and it's an authentic washoku restaurant run by a husband and wife. I dined there last October when I was on vacation with my family in Japan. I didn't write about it earlier because I don't quite know how to describe the food and the flavors at Seigen. Even now, as a write this entry, I can't decide what words to use.

Maybe it's because traditional Japanese food, unlike any other kind of cuisine I've experienced, is so perfectly subtle. The flavors are bold only in their simplicity. The textures and aromas are at once distinctive and harmonious. There are layers of delicate bitterness and umami and understated tang--tastes you wouldn't recognize or even notice unless you really tried. Washoku makes me think of the scene in Disney's Ratatouille when Remy the rat eats the cooked mushroom with the cheese for the first time. Each flavor has its own shimmering note and color.

That's what the food was like at Seigen. We enjoyed an exquisite seven-course meal (I forgot to take a photo of steamed fish and scallions in soy-citrus broth) prepared by the restaurant's proprietors. The dishes were beautiful. The ingredients were fresh and seasonal. The chef used persimmons and yuzu and chestnuts and little citrus-y, edible flower petals in ways I could never have imagined.

I'm certain that this blog post doesn't adequately describe the cuisine at Seigen. So if you're ever in Kyoto, please go there and have a meal. Then you'll know what I mean.