More on Furry's learning curve.

I am currently obsessed with dumplings. Gow Gees. Shui Mai. Gyoza. Wrap pretty much anything in a pastry wrapper, and I'll give it a red hot go. Coming off 5 weeks of being sick means that I have to treat my system with kid gloves. Dairy is still out, as is anything fatty. I've been living off Majick Phở and rice dishes for weeks, so I am on a major flava crava jones right now.

Furry.

Hmm. Yes.

Well.

He's back in Melbourne, longer than he expected. A few irons in the fire to get him back to PNG, but nothing set in concrete yet. We've adjusted to sharing living spaces again and I must admit, it's nice to come home and have the house all clean, and dinner cooked. In lieu of rent, I get my gutters cleaned and Furry Balls on demand.

Not such a bad arrangement, actually.

So yesterday, Furry announces he want to improve his repertoire of Furry Ball recipes. So I phaff off to work, leaving him with some $$ for ingredients and my car.

And get home to 90 dumplings, in 4 different flavours.



A quick call to friends up the hill, with an impassioned plea to come and help us eat all of the fruits of his labour, and we've got an instant Furry Ball Feast! It was so SO good, we have decided that while he's in town we'll utilize his skill and we've declared Tuesday "Dumpling Night"

This, from the man I met all those years ago, who thought serving nachos with a paint scraper was the height of his culinary possibilities. ]

Last nights offerings were chicken and ginger, pork and 5 spice, classic Furry Balls, and beef with Schezhuan pepper. The dipping sauces were siracha, red vinegar and sweet chilli, hoi sin, classic light soy and Furry's own concoction of soy, vinegar, sliced birds eye chillies and diced coriander roots.

He is now the proud owner of a mincer (for his up and coming seafood gow gee fest next Tuesday night), and is, as we speak, at home experimenting with xia long bao, or Shanghai soup dumplings.

And in true GREAT home cook style, he is realizing that a repertoire is not about how many recipes you can churn out from cookbooks, but on how you can adapt your knowledge-base to allow for seasonal ingredients, individual palates and plain old cravings.