Читать книгу Gyoza: The Ultimate Dumpling Cookbook - Paradise Yamamoto - Страница 11

Foreword

Every cuisine has a dumpling to showcase. Morsels of mostly savory ingredients

are stuffed into pockets of pliable dough, then pinched, pleated or folded into

bite-sized surprise packages. Eastern European kreplach, Turkish manti, Chinese

jiaozi, and Japanese gyoza share delicious DNA.

Now the improbably named Paradise Yamamoto has added even more variety to this widely loved but com-

monplace treat. This industrial designer, musician and certified Santa Claus has beaten as eclectic a path to the

dumpling as his name suggests, and is today surely the most creative wrapper of uniquely filled gyoza south of the

North Pole. We met at a café in Tokyo and I asked how he got his name. Wearing his signature knitted beanie, he

told me he wants to feel and spread happiness every day.

I have been eating and making gyoza since I first came to Japan forty-five years ago as a young bride. Through

decades of practice I became proficient in pleating the delicious pork and cabbage crescent. But Yamamoto-san’s

kaleidoscope of possibilities inspired me—and many of his Japanese readers—to break the bonds of convention. The

array of mouth-watering dumpling photos you see

on this book’s cover prompted one Japanese friend to

exclaim “yatte mitai” (I want to try making this)!

Yamamoto-san insists that we not use pre-

ground pork. “Chop your own,” he admonished me.

I did, and was astonished by the difference it made

in the perfectly seasoned pork and mushroom

gyoza I laid before grateful diners. A game of rock,

paper, scissors determined who got the last dump-

ling! He also counsels us not to use the standard

trinity of soy sauce, vinegar and chili oil for dip-

ping. A sprinkling of salt allows the flavors to shine

through. Revelatory!

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