I just finished reading "The Bonesetter's Daughter," by Amy Tan, and I wanted to find a great Chinese recipe to make to go with the book, because I enjoyed it so much. I did a bit of googling and came up with
Amy Tan's Mother's Potsticker Recipe. I think that it was utter serendipity that it was her mother's recipe because "The Bonesetter's Daughter" is all about mothers (and daughters, as the title implies!).
I have to say right away that what I made is not really her mother's recipe because they make the dough from scratch and I used wonton wrappers because of time constraints.
I am not going to repeat the recipe - it is in the article where the above link leads. It is a really nice article. Apparently, Amy and her siblings get together every year on the anniversary of their mother's death and make her famous potstickers. But, they can never get them quite right - because they were their mother's specialty. We have similar stories in my family. No one has ever been able to reproduce Aunt Mary's fried chicken or Gran's biscuits though we have all tried.
To make the potstickers, I chopped the Napa (see picture) and used ground pork and the other ingredients in the recipe. My wonton wrappers were square and they needed to be round(!) So, I took the lid ring of the small type of Ball jar and "traced" it with a small paring knife. The wrappers came in two stacks, and I did each entire stack at once and just cut through all the layers! (See picture.)
Then, I stuffed and "pleated" them and spread them all over the counter. After which, I boiled them in batches, and them fried their toasty little bottoms in MORE batches. And, then I made the sauce and served them. They were WOLFED down. These were a HUGE hit...
In "The Bonesetter's Daughter," Ruth, who was born in America tries to sort out the family secrets from back in China. And, there are secrets. And, adventures from the days of the revolution.
But, what I liked the most is what I liked the most about Amy Tan's other books, like "Saving Fish From Drowning," and that is that she mixes the real and the fantasy until I am not sure which is which. I like that! You know who else does that? Salman Rushdie. And, that is why it was fitting that I found "The Bonesetter's Daughter" and Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses" - beautiful hard cover editions sitting side-by-side at Goodwill for three dollars each!
Here is an example from "The Bonesetter's Daughter" of the lines between fantasy and reality being blurred. LuLing uses her daughter, Ruth, to "channel" her own mother (the bonesetter's daughter). She has Ruth draw in the sand. Ruth does not know what to draw, so she thinks, "Well, I'll just draw some lines." She does, and then LuLing gets all excited, because Ruth has just drawn a Chinese character! That leaves you, the reader, wondering...was that a coincidence? Is Ruth really channeling her grandmother? And, in a way, the reader is left to answer there questions for his or herself.
It goes without saying, but I give Amy Tan two thumbs up, and the potsticker's two thumbs up - even if they were not as good as her mom used to make...
I am linking this post up with
Weekend Cooking over at bethfishreads. The button is in my right column!
