Dumplings with Vegan Mushroom and Walnut Filling

For the past few week, I am not sure why but I had this awful crave for dumplings, and I'm sad to admit I dealt with it for week because I was actively looking for them during all that time. 

The first day I got the intense craving, somehow, I convinced myself it would be much easier to just buy some next time I was out for dinner, but I was so wrong. 

You know that strange Universal law that comes into action when you want something very badly and all of a sudden that "something" disappears form the face of the Earth?

All vegan friendly dumplings in town seemed to have disappeared at the same!

To add to the Universe's bad prank I was being super lazy and didn't want to make them, which is absolutely silly since dumplings are such an easy thing to make, I guess we have the idea that dumplings are complicated to make and time consuming but this is far from being true. 

This week I finally made myself go to the market, buy some pre made gyoza wrappers and solve this craving issue for good. Let me share with you this simple yet delicious recipe so you don't have to go through this drama, ever.

As I said before, dumplings are very easy to make, this is my second attempt and I am very proud of how they came out, also, I realised that you can make the filling out of pretty much whatever veggies you find in the fridge, no special trips to the market required! 

The "hardest" part of making dumplings I would have to say is getting the filling ingredients thinly sliced, to get around this just throw all the ingredients in a food processor and you will be golden, much easier that cutting everything by hand.

After all that "hard" work, here comes the fun part, assembling and cooking the dumplings. You can either make one by one or set a dumpling assembly line if you have enough space, you'll need a flat surface to place the gyoza wrappers so it easier to add the filling, don't add too much or your dumpling will explode!  

To close the dumpling, place the wrapper on your hand, wet half of it with your fingers, here comes the tricky part, fold it in half, make sure the filling doesn't fall off! It happens, and yes, I am talking from experience!, now just press the edges and it should stick together.

The last step is to cook them, here is where you make or break your creation! You want your dumplings to come out golden crispy and hold nicely, so we'll need to fry them on both sides and steam them for a couple of minutes, it can all be done in the same pan. 

As you can see, dumplings are very easy to make, now the hard part will be not to binge next time you make them, but hey, no one is judging here!