The Fragile Art of Making Dumplings

Contributor: Lilian Caylee // Photography: Jared Dougherty

Since the time she was a high school student in the northeastern China, my mother has made dumplings from scratch. She starts with ground pork, fresh shrimp, sometimes cabbage, and sometimes chives for the filling. For the skins, she mixes together flour and water, then lets it sit. She kneads the dough, sprinkling in more flour as she goes, the kitchen table gently swaying and groaning beneath her movements. The dough is rolled out into the shape of a snake, about two inches in diameter, then cut into smaller, oval pieces, about an inch wide.

The dough metamorphoses, passing speedily through phases of shape and size, until it reaches its final form. Before my brother was born, it was my responsibility to roll the oval pieces into round ones. I would sit next to my mother, babbling to myself, sneaking away pieces of dough to turn into "doughmen." Today, my brother has taken over this station. He's quicker though, thoughtful, and he eases the dough through its evolution with a concentration that I'd only reserved for novels. I've been promoted to the wrapping of the dumplings, spooning globs of pink and green filling and attempting to seal the skins with a combination of pressure and water, which turns the raw dough into a dull adhesive.

The dumpling aesthetic is something that I haven't quite grasped. In the dumplings that my mother wraps, there's a certain elegant complexity, the edges and folds perfectly and equally spaced; mine always come out looking rough around the edges and plain like a stick drawing.

To be fair, my parents have never actually sat down and taught me how to mix filling ingredients, or how to fold the edges of dumpling skin together. The same was true of using chopsticks -- something that I, much to the amusement of my friends, have yet to learn correctly.

In all things, they've expected me to learn by observation, imitation, and practice. In college, after unwittingly and incompletely assimilating into a world of boarding school WASPs, I realized that I was one of the few whose mothers hadn't passed down powder room secrets and freshwater pearls. My mother indulges in the occasional lipstick, but for ear piercings and eyeliner, I was the trailblazer. This was, after all, how they learned everything themselves. My parents' youth was colored by government seizures of family property and school yard invocations against education. In the agitated aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, no one had the time to walk them through the steps of a stir fry.

My father is always in charge of cooking the dumplings. This, too is an art. As with all forms of art, he tells me, "it's not as easy as it looks." He carefully slides the dumplings from a plate into a pot of hot water. He stands by the stove, keeping a watchful eye, and waxing philosophical.

The danger here is tearing the dumpling skin -- if the dumplings surrender to gravity and fall to the bottom of the pot, they'll stick to the metal; if the water boils, the waves will churn the dumplings too roughly; if the water isn't hot enough, the dumplings will become soggy. The key is to keep the dumplings in a perfect state of contentment, to allow them to drift calmly from a gentle wave to gentle wave. To calibrate the temperature, he adds in a bowl of cold water from time to time, typically three times per batch. Finally, after fishing out the first batch, he tastes one and announces in his baritone, "good!" or "this time, especially good!"

My parents are both cooks, with their own specialties. My mom's dumplings far outshine San Francisco's most acclaimed dumpling restaurants -- I've tried to persuade her to sell frozen versions like Kingdom of Dumpling does -- and I've never tasted short ribs that can even compare to my dad's.

With the exception of my mom's first foray into western desserts -- tiramisu and banana bread are now part of her repertoire -- neither of them follow recipes and there isn't a single cookbook in our home. When I first began baking cookies in the third grade, I asked my parents for measuring cups and spoons. My dad responded by chuckling. "Ingredients don't need to be measured. They're felt. With your heart and your taste buds, you'll figure it out." I ended up substituting a soup spoon to approximate the brown sugar, a water glass to scoop the butter, and, one weekend evening, a singed hand, and two dozen cookies later, I had mastered peanut butter cookies, recipe-less.

Since then, I've cooked countless times with friends and significant others. I've noticed how careful they are in comparison -- how closely they read each step, how cautiously they pour the olive oil. For me, cooking is an emotional experience -- sometimes, a big, beautiful mess; sometimes, a steady, thoughtful experiment. It seems to me that insisting on such a close, literal reading of someone else's interpretation threatens to extract the emotions and rid the whole thing of anything personal. What need is there to "feel with my heart" if every aspect is so exactly dictated?

Whenever I visit my parents, the first thing my dad says upon seeing me is, "Have you eaten?" He grunts hello and blushes in discomfort when I say I love you, but he is always eager to know when the last time I ate was. This sentiment never varies, regardless of the time of my arrival. Whether it's three o'clock in the afternoon or nine o'clock at night, the kitchen table will be set in patient anticipation what a handful of covered dishes. For my parents, and for most parents, feeding is an act of love. Stepping into their home will always mark the commencement of another meal, because regardless of the time, our home is where the kitchen is.