Pin It I made this dish courtesy of Food & Wine magazine tonight. I rarely even find veggie dumplings at the Chinese joints out here -- and I'm sure I wouldn't be impressed. No offense, Chinese joints in PDX -- but your food is lackluster at best. Just a conduit/front for your bars and your lottery machines. Sad but true. Veggie dumplings and/or fried rice used to be my staple delivery item in NY for when I was feeling ill or just hungry. Ahh delivery...another thing I miss. The ultimate in laziness and debauchery -- sitting in my bed watching cable TV waiting for the Chinese dude to climb 5 flights of stairs to bring me my doughy, delicious dumplings alongside sweet and vinegary "dumpling sauce," and then proceeding to gobble them down in said bed in front of said cable TV, sauce dripping down chin. Yeah, I was a dynamo back in my single NYC days for sure...

Anyhoo -- My substitutions were: frozen spinach instead of fresh, dried red pepper flakes instead of jalapenos, tamari instead of regular soy sauce, and toasted sesame oil instead of regular. I put the frozen spinach in a collander and ran hot water over it, pressed it into the collander and squeezed as much water out as I could. Then I sauteed everything first, since I have a phobia about frozen foods not being cooked, or cooked enough. So it was all cooked twice, but was still really delicious. Stumbling upon this recipe reminded me of the time I went on a press tour to Whole Foods in Chelsea in NYC. They were just starting to roast their own coffee in store -- Allegro brand. The Food & Wine peeps were on the tour and they were pretty cool. I couldn't be jealous of their jobs though because as a vegan I could never work at a "real" foodie mag. But I digress. The toasted sesame oil really makes this dish and -- truthfully -- any Asian dish IMHO.