Lovers of the hugely popular Chinese cuisine were treated to a live cookery demonstration by the “Dumpling Sisters”, namely Amy and Julie Zhang at the Sharjah International Book Fair 2015 taking place at the Expo Centre until the 14th November. The sisters have also delighted over a million followers on YouTube with their recipes for delicious Chinese food that anyone can create at home. We attended a session to see if this was actually true and found the sisters were making a popular dumpling dish they affectionately call, “Pot Stickers” so named, they said, because the fried delicacies always stick to the pot.
Using a fairly basic dough out of plain flour, water and salt the duo proceeded to take the audience through the steps of chicken pot stickers, with Amy kneading dough and Julie throwing chicken and spices into a bowl. So far, so good, it certainly seemed possible to recreate this dish at home, but the real test was to come. The Dumpling Duo then invited members of the audience up to the cooking station to see if they could mold and shape the ingredients into pot stickers themselves.
Never shying away from a challenge, we stepped up. The instructions were as follows: cup hand, place dough on to it, scoop filling into dough and fold. Now, what could possibly go wrong? Well... to begin with there is a pretty nifty and precise pinching motion necessary to get the right moon shaped curve in to the nibble, along with issues of too much filling, not enough filling, spilling filling and more. Nevertheless, as we proudly presented our slightly too chubby misshapen offering to the sisters we were met by enthusiastic praise of “great first attempt”. Pride at this was soon tempered when the two five-year-olds also mashing dough and chicken in Frankenstein balls received exactly the same response. It might well be possible to make this at home, but I’ll stick to writing and let the sisters stick to cooking. They have a natural talent for this and came to cooking infamy almost by accident. Julie explains, “We wanted to open a take away place that just served dumplings and were looking for backers. We had lots of interest but we were asked for proof we could actually cook and it was suggested we do some demonstrations on YouTube.”
The rest, is food-heaven-history and they became a web sensation and went on to work with Jamie Oliver on his Food Tube channel and naturally enough a book deal followed with “The Dumpling Sisters Cookbook”. Born in China, growing in New Zealand the two currently reside in London and have plans for a second cook book in the making. Surprisingly the girls both have office day jobs, Amy has a Chemistry Ph.d, perhaps explaining her culinary alchemy skills, and currently works in advertising while Julie has a Master’s in criminology, and judging by what she did to that chicken, it’s no surprise. Julie has just finished an internship at Defra, the UK government’s Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs and says what she would like to do is open a dumpling take away. Which is good news for anyone with cooking skills on par with us. If you’d like a Chinese cooking lesson find the sisters on the 8th and 9th November at the SIBF.