Daikon and Hakusai Gyoza

Daikon & Hakusai Gyoza (a recipe from "Lettuce Club" ) Another recipe from the Jan. 25, 2009 issue of Lettuce Club. It's a low-cal dish that uses thinly sliced daikon radish as gyoza (potstickers) skin and more minced hakusai (Chinese cabbage) than ground meat for the filling. Good recipe for those who can slice daikon in 3 mm thick disks or who have a vegetable slicer like this one. I loved this gyoza wrapper! :D It was crispier and probably healthier than regular dumpling skin. The only problem with this dish was having to use salt to soften the daikon wrappers and minced Chinese cabbage. I should have used less salt when seasoned the filling... My gyoza tasted just a little too salty, and probably the salt wasn't very good for my relatively high blood pressure. ------- (Added Feb. 14) Wow! I didn't think this many people would be attracted to this dish. OK. Let me add a little more information here. About daikon wrapper: You don't need to peel the daikon. Wash it well and slice it with the skin on. Spread the thin daikon disks on a flat surface and sprinkle both sides with a little salt. Sorry, I don't remember how long I waited and the recipe doesn't say anything about this... Just try folding one of them. If it folds as much as the wrappers in these photos do without breaking, it's ready. (Now the original recipe didn't say anything about this but I washed off the salt with running water when the daikon wrappers became soft enough.) Pat-dry them with paper towel. Then spread them on a flat surface and sprinkle one side with potato or corn starch using a tea strainer or something just to thinly cover the surface. This should keep the filling in the wrapper. ;) Put the filling on each wrapper and fold it. About the filling: The ingredients are ground pork, minced veggies (hakusai cabbage, green onion, ginger and garlic), salt, pepper, potato (or corn) starch, sesame oil, sake and soy sauce. The minced hakusai needs to be softened beforehand and you do this by mixing in a little salt and leaving it for a while (again, the recipe doesn't say how much salt or leave it how long). While waiting, you can mix other ingredients and seasonings in a bowl, and when the minced hakusai is soft enough, squeeze the water off it and mix in. I didn’t wash off the salt from the hakusai there and that’s why I wrote “I should have used less salt when seasoned the filling” above. Frying: And when you fry the gyoza with a little vegetable oil in a frying pan, fry both sides of the gyoza first to slightly brown them, then put a lid on the pan to sort of “steam-fry” them over low heat until the filling is done. I didn't need to add water because enough water came out from the veggies. And the best tip I can give you here is: If the filling comes out, just put it back in the wrapper! Yep, THIS is the secret. LOL ** One question. What do you call these in English? Sorry. Maybe I should give more explanation. They are not used for baking (though I assume that they could stand the heat of the oven.) They are usually used for keeping prepared food or ingredients like chopped vegetables or filleted fish or wrapped gyoza that are ready to be fried, etc. Most often we put food in them, cover with plastic food wrap and keep in the fridge. They are called "stainless vat (pronounced 'batto')" or "kitchen vat" here, but I've been wondering if the word "vat" came from English. Categories: Asian-inspired