BIRTHDAY GYOZAPOCALYPSE

so here's the gyoza soup preamble, bc it's apparently illegal to write up a recipe without including one (1) life story. since i don't have a disgusting husband who thinks vegetables are communist or any shitty nugget-golem children or any feelings about the changing of the seasons im gonna take this time to say: don't make this. don't do it, making dumplings is hell. what had happened was, i got bronchitis and stopped at a place on the way home from work and had gyoza soup, which was like the most genius thing i had never even thought of to that point. and it was amazing and i decided to recreate it, and then a coworker said it was a) her birthday soon and b) she hadnt had pho in a long time, so i figured this would be similar. i /did/ make it and it /was/ a success but i'm never going to do it again. buy gyoza at the store and put them in a bowl of ramen. and remind me to remove any references to beating meat from the recipe before i give it to any coworkers.

about 1lb ground pork
a nice cut of steak
1 head bok choy or napa cabbage
about 1.5 carrots
a bundle of cilantro
garlics
green onions
dashi stock
miso
lemon grass
chili paste
ginger paste
rice wine vinegar
soy sauce
sesame oil
fish sauce
wonton wrappers

first, make a marinade: crushed garlic, sesame oil, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, chili paste, lemon grass, ginger paste, a splash of teriyaki, onion powder, five spice, lemon pepper, fish sauce, miso. that's a shit of a lot of things to put in a marinade, so don't put too much of any one thing.

trim your steak, cut it up so the grain is short, so it winds up tender and absorbs the marinade well. i don't remember the cut of beef i used, it wasn't anything super fancy though. put your chunks in some cling wrap and beat your meat to a respectable thinness with the surprisingly weighty garlic crusher you bought at ikea. you could use a can or whatever too. if only someone made a tool for this.

put your steak bits in the marinade, which i reccommend be in a bag and not on like a distressed wood picnic table or something. use the water submersion trick to vacuum it basically, for maximum meat/marinade contact. fridge. plan for this to marinade for awhile, overnight even. standard fish/chicken disclaimer.

finely chop: your cabbage. not all of it. the goal is to have about as much vegetations as you have meat, in the filling? personally i would have liked more veggie even than that but at a certain point it's midnight and you can't keep chopping cabbage. if you'd started this before whatever dumbshit time you dragged into the kitchen maybe you could have used the food processor. it's too late now, you're in hell, forever. also grate some carrot.

(i was julienning and grating kind of simultaneously but also eating some of the carrots, so i'm not sure what amount got what treatment. maybe like half as much as the amount of cabbage you end up using? i can't back that up. de stem and shred some cilantro, chop some green onion, add that too. reserve some of the cilantro and green onion)

add pork, get to seasoning. a bit of miso, some chili paste, juuuuuuust a bit of fish sauce. some recipes want you to salt drain the vegetables, cut down on moisture, but that seems unnecessary. still, save yourself a bit of moisture by using garlic powder instead of real, i guess. that's what i told myself i was doing, anyway. onion powder and powdered ginger, too. add five spice, realise too late that the jar looks exactly like the allspice jar. p sure allspice is a component of 5 spice anyway? it was fine. just season it a lot. mix this by hand, ignore recipes that say to 'throw it into the bowl like a softball repeatedly' those people have a fetish and you probably don't know how to throw a softball anyway.

start making gyoza! the store doesn't have gyoza wrappers, you have wonton wrappers, but you just do a triangle fold and then pleat the edges. use water to seal, it's just like making wontons, bc that's what you're doing. use less filling than you think. keep lessening it. zeno's paradox that shit. now you'll be making gyoza for the rest of your miserable life.

you can freeze some of these, on a cookie sheet or w/e, so they won't goop all together. since you can't possibly cook all these in one go.

put on a pot of water, containing about as much as you'll want broth. add dashi, lemon grass, ginger paste, julienned carrots, chili paste, some fish sauce and soy, some sweet basil, five spice, crushed garlic, and the roots of your green onions. while that comes to a low boil and cooks the carrots, stir fry your beef, fry your gyoza in batches (use sesame oil for both) and chiffonade some romaine or whatever crunchy lettuce floats your boat. at this point you're basically doing four things at once and you still don't have dinner.

when the beef is browned, throw it into the soup pot. your gyoza should get golden brown on the bottom, and then you add just like a millimeter or two of water to the skillet and cover. steam them tenderly, then sacrifice one to the meat thermometer, repeating until the one you stab gives the reading for safe pork consumption. because thre's raw pork in this, remember.

keep cooking the soup part, until the carrots are soft enough for your liking.skim off the lemon grass bits and stuff of that nature if you don't like soup to have small bits. personally that's what keeps me going in life so i leave it. scoop out some soup broth, let it cool a bit, and add a hearty dollop of miso, stirring to dissolve. you have to temper miso or it will die before you eat it and you won't absorb its soul. put the ensouled broth back with the other broth. stir and whatall, but don't let it boil henceforth.

put your cool green crunchy in a big bowl, put gyoza on it to wilt it a bit, top with soup plentifully. garnish soup with green onions and cilantro. enjoy it, because you will never do this again ever. vow it. swear, say the words aloud.

you will have a lot of gyoza. you can freeze them, you can throw them at birds, i don't care. if you already cooked them, you can just steam them in the microwave to reheat. if they're still raw but you froze em that way you gotta thaw and fry and steam and all that, so don't do that probably. don't do any of this actually. go to a restaurant.