While pondering what to do with some extra zucchini from my mom's garden, I stumbled across a Cook the Book post over at Eatocracy with pictures of some insanely delicious-looking dumplings. I knew the moment I saw that picture that I was going to have to make them myself as soon as possible..
My brother was laughing at me because I was explaining that I almost never cook vegetarian... I told him I was planning to make these dumplings, and I said, "Ooh. Those are vegetarian! I'm serving them with pork..." Subtract the pork from the equation, though, and they'd be a really impressive vegetarian appetizer...
Even though the recipe was online, I ended up buying this book because the recipe was so pretty... There are approximately a million other recipes in there that I can't wait to try.
The filling is super-easy: grated zucchini, rough-chopped baby spinach, and minced onion all cook in some butter and oil... (We cooked this over at my mom's house... which is to say that my mom cooked while I lent moral support and genius advice when the recipe was weird...)
Meanwhile, yukon gold potatoes are cooked. After the zucchini mixture has drained and cooled for a half hour, the potatoes and some feta are mixed in... (This mixture would even make a good crostini topping if you had some leftover...)
The dough was a bit funny. The first batch my mom made before I came over followed the recipe and ended up pretty dry. After using all of this dough with our double-batch of filling, I read on the Serious Eats page that they had the same problem and fixed it by increasing the sour cream content. We ended up doubling the sour cream in the second batch of dough, and it was perfectly supple and pliable. We'll definitely do that again on all future batches. Anyway, the dough is cut into 3-inch rounds...
The recipe calls for a flattened tablespoon of filling in each round, but that seemed completely impossible (especially with the dry dough, but even with the second batch...) so we ended up using about half that (a mounded teaspoon) instead...
Between the two of us, we were able to assemble these pretty quickly...
The first step in cooking the dumplings is to boil them for about 3 minutes. They start to float to the top as they finish this stage of cooking (in almost exactly 3 minutes), so if you don't want to set the timer you can just watch for that...
The other weird part of the recipe is that it says to lay these out on waxed paper after boiling them, but that's sort of stupid (we tried, against our better judgement... it was a bit of a disaster...), so I would recommend a metal cooling rack instead...
This part can be done in advance. When you're ready for dinner, the dumplings are sautéed in butter until golden and beautiful and delicious...
So pretty and delicious... Yum!
The other component, which I made the day before over at my house, was the lemon marmalade. Lemons, sugar, and a bit of salt combine to form gooey yumminess...
I peeled the zest off of all the lemons first...
... then thin-sliced the peels into strips...
These could have been more perfect if I sliced fewer at a time, but I was in no mood for that... and it turned out well enough anyway...
My only complaint with the recipe was the way it asked you to approach the pulp of the lemons. You begin by cutting away the peel/pith, as you would if you were going to supreme the lemon, but then she asks you to cut the lemon into pieces and cut away any larger bits of membrane while removing seeds...
This was stupid and tedious, so I only did one her way and supremed the rest like a normal person...
The zest and pulp are combined with the sugar, salt, and a bit of water, and cooked down until reduced to a cup and a half.
The finished product is pretty intensely sticky and gooey... but also really delicious in a tangy/sweet/bitter way...
The dumplings are served up with some sour cream and a bit of this lemon marmalade, plus a sprinkling of chopped dill.
As mentioned above, I served this with pork because somehow I always feel like I need to serve vegetarian dishes with a side of animal...
This recipe (with the tweaks we learned from experience) immediately went onto the Awesome Things To Impress Guests With list. Both my mom and I will totally be making this recipe over and over and over again... My only regret is that we didn't make a quadruple batch for increased leftovers...
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