TIBETAN VEGGIE OR MEAT MOMO'S (TIBETAN DUMPLINGS)

TIBETAN VEGGIE OR MEAT MOMO'S (TIBETAN DUMPLINGS) image

Yield ~30 momos: for ~4 people

Number Of Ingredients 20

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Ingredients

For the dough:
3 cups of flour (all-purpose)
3/4 cup of water
For vegetable momo filling:
Chop all the following ingredients into very, very small pieces:
Two onions
Two inches fresh ginger
Two or three cloves of garlic
A bunch of cilantro
One pound of cabbage
One pound of tofu*
One quarter pound of dark brown mushrooms (I buy them dried from Asian markets)*
Two tablespoons of soy sauce
One teaspoon of chicken, beef or vegetable bouillon
*don't use these if you are making meat momo's
For meat momo filling, add:
One pound of ground beef: This beef replaces the mushrooms and tofu in the vegetable recipe. If you have enough time, you can use un-ground beef and chop the meat into very small pieces.
Dough:
Mix the flour and water very well by hand and keep adding water until you make a pretty smooth ball of dough. Then knead the dough very well until the dough is flexible. Now leave your dough in the pot with the lid on while you prepare the rest of the ingredients. You should not let the dough dry out, or it will be hard to work with.
For both kinds of momo's, put all of the ingredients in a pot or big bowl, then add a teaspoon of bouillon and two tablespoons of soy sauce. Mix everything together very well. (If you are making meat momo's with ground beef, you may need to use your hands to mix it up.)

Steps:

(See http://www.yowangdu.com -- for photos, for round momo shape directions, and for more Tibetan recipes.) To shape the dumplings, place the dough on a chopping board and use a rolling pin to roll it out quite thinly. It should not be so thin that you can see through it when you pick it up, nor should it be quite as thick as a floppy disk for a computer. After you have rolled out the dough, you will need to cut it into little circles for each momo. The easiest way to do this is turn a small cup or glass upside down to cut out circles a little smaller than the palm of your hand. Then you are ready to add the filling. I will teach you the easiest momo shape-- the half-moon. You begin by holding the flat circular dough in your left hand and putting a tablespoon of filling in the middle of the dough. Then you have to fold your circle of dough in half, covering over the filling. Now press together the two edges of the half circle so that there is no open edge in your half circle, and the filling is completely enclosed in the dough. You will now have the basic half-moon shape, and you can make your momo pretty by pinching and folding along the curved edge of the half circle. Start at one tip of the half-moon, and fold over a very small piece of dough, pinching it down. Continue folding and pinching from the starting point, moving along the edge until you reach the other tip of the half-moon. As you are making your momo's, you will need to have a non-stick surface and a damp cloth or lid handy to keep the momo's you've made from drying out while you're finishing the others. Finally, you should boil water in a large steamer. Oil the steamer surface lightly so the momos won't stick to the metal, then place as many as you can without touching each other. Steam the momo's for 10 minutes, then serve them hot, with soy sauce or hot sauce of your choice to dip them in.