主题：【原创】饺子 -- 燕人

这是为我女儿学校准备的，我想会有网友也需要这个吧。写得不好，大家随用随改吧。

饺子Jiao-zi is a traditional North Chinese food. The name was mistakenly translated as dumpling by somebody. Whether he is Chinese or British, nobody knows. Jiaoz-zi is a food of ancient origin, which could be traced back in about AD200.

It was a severe winter in one middle province of China. Many people suffered frostbite which happened on people’s ears. The Chinese hats at the time are more for decoration, not for protection from cold. One of the most eminent doctors of China during the time lived in that area. He offered an easy way for treatment of the mass scale frostbite. His method is to chop up mutton with ginger and some other herbs as filling, wrapped it in little parcels made of wheat flour pastry and boil it. After the parcels were boiled and still hot, people ate the parcel and drank the water in which the parcels were boiled. The water was seasoned with lots of spring onion, coriander and white pepper, so it is a very tasty soup by itself. One can imagine the effect of it. Indeed, people felt warm through after having this tasty “medicine”. He asked people to wrap the parcels in the shape of ear and called the parcel Jiao-er (in Chinese娇耳), which in Chinese literally means tender/vulnerable ear. This is purely to help people believe that the parcel will do them good, as it is a principle for Chinese medicine that everything in the world is connected and a material in nature with certain origin/shape could help a human body to get rid of certain diseases. This is very primitive idea of medicine, but in the case of this severe frostbite and mutton parcel method, people were healed and saved. They honoured so much the method and spread it to all parts of China where it is cold. Literally it is North China. That is why Jiao-zi is a North China food.

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Mr Zhang Zhongjing, the great doctor who invented Jiao-zi as supplement for frostbite

The shape of Jiao-er had changed a lot from ear to crescent or other shapes. And it has become the staple food for New Year in North China, because new years’ time is normally the coldest and this “medicine” is definitely indispensable. Nevertheless, in the area where Jiao-er was created, people so cherish the original Jiao-er and still have it in the same way as nearly 2000 years ago.

The change of name stemmed from Chinese time. There are 12 “Chinese hours (in Chinese时辰)” in a full day. The last “Chinese hour” in a day is called “zi子时”. By New Year’s Eve, people will only have the food when the hour is changed from the last “zi” of this year to the first day of New Year. Therefore the food was called 交子 (literally means to change from zi) initially and rewritten to 饺子 which pronounce the same way but look more food wise from the writing. This explains how the name changed from Jiao-er to Jiao-zi.

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Jiao-zi ready for cooking

Although Jiaoz-zi is a must for North Chinese on the New Year’s Eve, it has also become popular as a daily food in every part of China. Because of the ingredients are mixture of meat and vegetable, also the pastry is made of water and wheat flour, it is balanced in nutrition and very healthy. The way of wrapping seals all flavours inside, just like a nice English pie. It is so tasty that everybody likes it after having tried it. The filling varies in different areas, and the cooking of it could be by boiling, steaming and pan-frying, even deep frying.

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Steamed Jiao-zi, one variety of the Dim-Sum range

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Pan-fried Jiao-zi

Japanese learned the food from those Chinese who live in Japan. They imitated the Chinese way of pronouncing Jiao-zi but only corrupted it into gyo-za. Funny enough, this so-called Japanese speciality has been put on sale in some UK supermarket. If there is anything special about Japanese gyo-za, it is always pan-fried.

Japanese gyo-za in Sainsbury’s

It is easy to prepare Jiao-zi in the UK. All ingredients are readily available from any main supermarket. Here is one easy recipe:

Ingredients:

For filling: 500gram beef mince (fat content 20%) 1 medium onion, 4 stalks of celery, 1 small trunk of ginger 1tbsp soy sauce, salt and ground pepper, 1tsp sesame oil

For pastry: this is the tricky part. Recommend to buy from Chinese shop. Or 300gram white bread flour and water to mix up dough

Method: To make a filling, chop up all vegetables very finely. A blender could do the good job. Then mix the vegetables with the mince, season with soy sauce, salt and pepper. Stir the mixture until it is well blended. Drizzle in sesame oil for extra length of flavour. Divide the filling among each individual pastry and wrap it into a half round parcel. Make sure there is no air pocket in the parcel, otherwise it will expand too much during cooking. Squeeze the edge of parcel with fingers to ensure it is sealed.

Jiao-zi could be either boiled or pan-fried. To boil it, the water must be boiled first, and only then the Jiao-zi could be dropped into it. Keeps water boiling for 5minutes before the Jiao-zi is ready. To pan-fry it, a deep pan is needed. It is the same as pan-fried other food with a little oil, which only serves to lubricate the pan. Jiao-zi doesn’t need to be turned over. The magic is to pour hot water into the sizzling pan and put a lid on it. The water could boil simultaneously as you pour it so a very quick action is required. The water should only cover the bottom of Jiao-zi and help cook the upper part of it by steaming. When all water in the pan dries out the pan-fried Jiao-zi is ready. Pan-fried Jiao-zi benefits from a combination of taste due to its fried crispy bottom and steamed soft upper part.

A lidded pan with Jiao-zi being pan-fried

You can also steam Jiao-zi if you have a steamer. It is far much easier to cook by steaming. And the taste of steamed Jiao-zi is a completely different one with the other two. Just to make sure the steam is vigorous inside the steamer before putting Jiao-zi into it. 3-5 minutes of steaming is fine.

In China, people use all kinds of meats and vegetables as filling. The most typical fillings are 1) pork with Chinese Leaf and 2) pork, prawn and Chinese chive. The latter one is a classical recipe for a lot of North Chinese families, while the first one is more popular all the time, especially in the areas that surround Beijing. Beef and celery filling may be created by Chinese Muslim but it is well accepted by every Chinese. Some people use courgette, aubergine and green pepper for fillings which are still not rare but some even go for tomato and cucumber which are really extraordinary. All these Jiao-zi taste so beautiful and give you a unique feeling.

As a rule, Jiao-zi must be eaten reasonably hot while it won't burn your tongue, and the water in which Jiao-zi is boiled will be drunk after the meal as soup. This is the best way to honour the ancient tradition and principle that Mr Zhang Zhongjing created nearly 2,000 years ago.From the point of view of Ecosystem, not only the food,but also the energy for cooking is absorbed by human body.

We should say, that Jiao-zi is not merely a food. It is the wisdom of the people who survive the natural environment and enjoy the most of it as much as possible. This wisdom had been handed down by generations of Chinese and will be shared and cherished by more and more people all over the world.