DRAWING & WRITING ON SKINS

One of my favorite things to do with colorful/flavorful dumpling doughs (detailed on pages 52-57 of the book) is to roll out my “canvas” sheet and then roll out another sheet or two of a contrasting color. Then I use a pasta cutter (the scalloped edges that a fluted pasta roller makes look great) or my pasta machine to cut my thin-to-thick noodles and I write or draw with them on my dough sheet. Please tag your fun creations with #dumplingsequallove so I can see!

Once you are finished designing, push down on the noodles onto the dough sheet lightly with your palms, just enough so that the lines are secure, and either hand roll it pr pass it through the pasta roller a few times to your desired thickness. Any dumpling scraps that you re-roll will become marbled!

When you get into creating art skins you’ll start free-forming and combining all sorts of these techniques. Just wing it! Turn up the music, shake your bones and flap those wings birdies.

Two-toned sheets. These sheets are beautiful, in general, but particularly for shumai, because you get to see the color of one sheet on the outside of the dumpling and a contrasting color peeking out from the inside. Simply roll out two different colored and flavored doughs to similar size and thickness, stack them and roll them out again to your desired thickness.