Making Gyoza for Lunch

When you grow your own food, you tend to cook your own food, too. I spend a lot of time on the farm, so it's only natural that I cook frequently. I usually pack my lunch for the day job, and this morning I woke up thinking about gyoza (a.k.a potsticker). "Thinking" is an understatement. I had an urge of having gyoza for lunch and actually got up at 7 A.M. on an office day.

I bought a pack of ground beef for making curry beef puff pastries a couple nights ago (that was another craving). I knew that I would have leftover ground beef after the puff pastries, so I got a pack of gyoza wrappers as well. I chopped up a bunch of farm fresh scallions and one store bought king oysters mushroom. They were mixed in with the ground beef along with spices. After all the ingredients were mixed well, I started folding the gyoza together. I figured 15 gyoza would be enough for lunch. For those of you who know me, if you want to learn how to fold gyoza, ask me to do a demo for you.

I heated up a few table spoons of oil in a non-stick pan (a well seasoned cast iron pan works, too) and put all the gyoza in there as shown in the picture above.


Let them sizzle for a minute or so then pour some water in there and cover the pan. Reduce the heat to low and let the water steam the gyoza. This way you don't need to turn the gyoza to cook them through. When they are fully cooked, you will see the change in color as they become semi-transparent. I used a Pyrex lid, so I could see them while they cooked.

When they are cooked through, lift the lid and let the water fully evaporate. The oil you put in the pan earlier will start to brown the bottom of gyoza and give them a nice golden brown color. I like my gyoza crispy.

When I was about to have my 15 pieces of gyoza for lunch, all 3 people I was having lunch with asked me the same question, "Are you going to eat all that?" Well, I was going to try. As a result, I offered each of them a piece to shut them up.

Zucchini

I have continuous success growing zucchini for a couple years now. The blossoms are great for deep frying with cheese stuffed inside. If you are going to eat the blossoms, make sure that you pick the male flowers. The picture above shows a female flower with a zucchini on one end (upper flower) and a male flower with just a skinny stem on the end (lower flower).


The zucchini I grow are small. I think that's because I am not giving them enough room. I also get blossom end rot frequently. You can see a rotting zucchini in the picture above right underneath the male flower. If I catch those rotting zucchini early enough, I just cut the rotted ends off and eat them.

Blossom-end rot is caused by a lack of calcium in the developing fruit. So either the plant is not absorbing enough calcium from the soil or the soil doesn’t have enough calcium in it to start with. The solution is to get a PH soil test kit and test your soil. If it is lacking calcium, the solution would be to add calcium to your soil.

If the test shows the soil is okay, then you can increase nutrient uptake to the roots of the plant by mulching and adding compost/organic matter to your soil.

Inky Parasols

I noticed an unexpected visitor during July 4th weekend in one of my strawberry pots. I was surprised to see an inky parasol in July! Members of the mushroom genus Coprinus are called 'inky caps' because the cap turns into a black inky ooze of spores as the mushrooms mature. They usually reach inky stage within a few hours. There are many North American species in this genus (over 200 known species worldwide), including the popular and easy-to-recognize, Shaggy Mane mushroom, Coprinus comatus.


By noon the strawberry Inky was falling apart. I was feeling a little melancholy to see the Inky leaving so soon. Back in February they were popping up in one of my 4x4 potato and onion beds every morning. It was always a delight to see those little round fuzzy caps popping up from underneath the mulch.

Harvesting Green Onion Seeds

Most of green onions on the farm were grown from store bought onions. Green onions (a.k.a. scallions) you get from grocery stores come with roots. If you save about 2-3 inches from above the roots and stick them in the soil, they will start to grow. You will then have endless supply of green onions.

They will flower and each pompom looking flower is actually a cluster of small flowers. Bees love onion flowers. I often wonder what onion blossom honey tastes like. After the flowers dry up, you will see little black specks of seeds in each tiny flower. Each cluster of flowers probably produces nearly 100 seeds depending on the size.


I have grown some green onions from seeds. They grew very slowly in compare to just planting the roots from store bought onions. However, you do get more tender green onions if you grow them from seeds. I am collecting various seeds for the next seed exchange gathering in the fall.

Potato Tempura for Afternoon Snack

I have been harvesting the red potatoes I planted in January. So far I have pan fried them, made Indian potatoes, and deep fried them. Just last weekend, I have deep fried all sorts of garden veggies for my herb class. If you ever cooked for others, you know that you generally don't get to eat much. I was feeling hungry this afternoon, and as usual, there are hardly anything in the fridge other than jars of assorted homemade pickles. I went out to the farm and started digging into the potato patch.


I found a few decent size potatoes, washed them, and thinly sliced them. I used the same setup as last week - flour, egg wash, and panko. Instead of using the deep fryer, I used my cast iron pan on the stovetop since I was only going to fry a small quantity. The panko coated potato slices were fried to a nice golden color. I like to eat these potato tempura with Bull Dog Worcestershire Sauce.


Many people asked me about this "panko" (パン粉) I used last weekend. This is Japanese style bread crumb, the same stuff for making shirmp tempura, tonkatsu, and croquettes that you get in Japanese restaurants. Last Thanksgiving, I made Alton Brown's Green Bean Casserole and panko was one of the ingredients. It's a recipe I will definitely use again.