Archive for March, 2008

Curry gyoza bento lunches

Gyoza potstickers are a handy finger food for kids, delivering protein and veggies in a neat little package. I like to keep a bag on hand in the freezer for mornings when I don’t have the time or imagination to make something more elaborate. Store-bought or homemade, these flavorful dumplings are a lunchtime favorite even at room temperature.

Contents of preschooler bento lunch: Pan-fried curry gyoza (details and tutorial here, spinach wrappers filled with leftover Japanese curry), roasted asparagus (recipe here), blueberries, cherry tomatoes and cheese cubes.

Morning prep time: 15 minutes, using leftover roasted asparagus from dinner. In the morning I actually made the three gyoza fresh using leftover curry, but you can freeze the assembled curry gyoza and have them ready to cook on time-pressed mornings. (Read on for lunch details and an additional preschooler lunch…)

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Published by Biggie on March 3rd, 2008 tagged bento, dumplings or buns, fish or seafood, food jar, for kids, meat, soup or stew | 18 Comments »

Leftover Remake: Curry gyoza

I often cook in bulk and pack leftovers for lunch, maximizing the payoff for the time I actually spend cooking. But eating the same thing day after day gets tiresome, as anyone who’s eaten turkey for a week after Thanksgiving knows. Japanese bento cookbooks are full of ways to give new life to dinner leftovers, for example using leftover potato salad to make little Scotch eggs or faux latkes with tuna.

One fast dinner option at our house is Japanese curry, made with little blocks of shelf-stable Japanese curry roux (cooking notes here). I’ve previously made curry pasta with frozen unsauced pasta, and stirred leftover curry into macaroni and cheese. This time I decided to try my hand at using the leftover curry to fill gyoza potstickers (jiaozi in Chinese, mandu in Korean). These can be frozen in bulk and cooked up quickly on time-pressed mornings.

The trick to making these is to use premade gyoza wrappers from the market, and to pick out the chunks of meat and vegetables from the curry and mash them up with only enough curry liquid to flavor it. An overly liquid filling yields soggy, flat dumplings. (Read on for step-by-step directions.)

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