用湯勺做蛋餃 Making Egg Dumplings

    小時候鄉下老家過年，尤以做蛋餃的場景最為溫馨。一家人守著炭盆聊天的時候，祖母左手拿著湯勺，右手邊是一小塊肥肉或豬油，和一碗打散的雞蛋。不鏽鋼的湯勺在炭火上燒熱，用豬油輕輕一抹，湯勺裏幾乎不留油跡，卻已變成一個小小的不粘鍋。這時候祖母舀一小勺蛋液，把湯勺晃晃，就出來一個圓圓的蛋餅。坐在旁邊的母親，靈巧地用筷子從手裏的碗中夾一團肉餡放到蛋餅中間，再順手把蛋皮牽起，對折好，一個蛋餃就做成了。大家說著話的功夫，不知不覺中就做出一盆黃燦燦的金元寶來。

    Among my childhood memories, the homiest is the scene of egg dumpling making for the Lunar New Year.

    I grew up in a remote village between the Yangtz and the Huai rivers. There people get warm by burning charcoal in an iron pot in the winter. And Grandma would make egg dumplings with Mom on our charcoal warming pot, using a soup ladle.

    The work was usually carried out a couple of days before New Year's eve, mostly after dinner. While our whole family sitting around the charcoal warming pot, chatting casually, Grandma set up her workplace by putting a little piece of lard or raw pork fat and a bowl of bitten egg at her right hand side and holding a soup ladle in her left hand. Heated on the burning charcoal, the stainless steel soup ladle became a mini nonstick frying pan after been seasoned by a thin layer of lard. Then Grandma poured a teaspoon of liquid egg into her mini pan, shook it lightly, and a tiny little round egg crepe appeared. Now Mom, sitting next to Grandma with a bowl of ground pork mixture in her hand, put a proper lump of meat in with a pair of chopsticks, folded the egg crepe and closed it up, right in time before the egg became too dry to seal. An egg dumpling was done in just a few blinks of an eye.

    A big bowl of egg dumplings -- visually a full heap of gold treasure -- were easily made while we were still talking.

    今年的春節特別忙，本來年夜飯是準備糊弄的，卻因為突然想念起這份年味兒，而忍不住跑去買了大小合適的湯勺，回家認真做起了蛋餃。

    I have been running on a very tight schedule lately and I wasn't planning to do serious cooking for the Lunar New Year. But I failed to resisit the longing for reliving such sweet moments after they were recalled. So I bought a proper soup ladle from a local Chinese store, and made egg dumplings my old folk's way for the first time.

【湯勺 The Stainless Steel Soup Ladle】

【蛋餃製作流程 The Cooking Process】

    蛋餃的做法極簡單：豬瘦肉切成末，略剁，加薑末、鹽、胡椒粉、料酒，拌勻。雞蛋打入碗中，放微量食鹽，用筷子打散。三兩豬肉，四個中號雞蛋，做出了三十個蛋餃和六張迷你雞蛋皮。

    The ingredients and recipe are extremely simple. The filling is made of lean pork, ground or finely chopped, well mixed with minced ginger, salt, white pepper powder and cooking wine, while the wrapping just well beaten eggs with a tiny pinch of salt.

    With 5 onces of pork and 4 medium eggs, I made 30 egg dumplings and 6 mini egg crepes in less than an hour.

 

【成品 Finished Product】

    由於左手要一直端著“鍋”，隻能單獨由右手抓起手機來拍照，所以照片都拍糊了。可我還是很滿足，因為心中的童年美好仍然清晰真切。離家多年以後，我又感受到了幼時濃濃的年味兒，而這曾經遙遠的異國他鄉，如今也已成為故鄉。

    Even though the photos I took with one hand while the other had to hold my mini "frying pan" were out of focus, the lovely scenes in my memory are very real and clear. After being away for so many years, I am finally able to enjoy the old taste of New Year again. And the little town where I live right now, once an unreachablely far away foreign place, has already become my new hometown.