Reading · To Vegetables, With Love

Welcome to To Vegetables, With Love, a celebration of a vegetable life, less ordinary. ‘ Find archived recipes on my recipe index.

Get information about my books and recipes over at my website.

Thank you to everyone who reached out about my new website! I am so happy you are enjoying it resource for weeknight cooking.

In my book To Asia, With Love, there’s a section called Dumplings, By the Season, a guide to how to incorporate seasonal veggies into dumplings. To this day, it remains one of the favorite things written for a book. Obviously it was fun to be inspired by seasonal vegetables for the fillings, but what I was most excited about was the opportunity to break dumplings out of their box, to let them be free and embrace all the possibilities.

A dumpling for every season, from To Asia, With Love

Asian style dumplings, the ones I know best, are still intimidating to many. I think it’s the crimping process that scares people. The fold and the pleat exposes all the flaws, it appeals to, and terrorizes, the perfectionist in all of us. Here are my tenets for being a more relaxed dumpling maker:

we are not born knowing how to crimp dumplings,
it takes years of practice, every day is a new day, and on some days, you are just not going to crimp a perfect dumpling, but you will make one that is okay but still tastes great,
in every batch of dumplings, some will be gorgeous while some may be ugly,
don’t judge an imperfect dumpling by its looks, it will still be delicious.

Dumplings are often portrayed as time consuming to make from scratch, and in truth, they can be. But, like most other types of meals, there are hacks. On a weeknight, use store-bought dumpling or wonton wrappers (duh!), and look at what you have in your fridge / pantry as potential fillings. Don’t overthink it. Potatoes, for example, are PERFECT for dumpling fillings. They are mashable, which makes a really good base for a filling; from here, you can add herbs, spices, condiments like chili crisp, or other veg like wilted greens. Beans are also good base, because again, they are mashable and you can add other veggies and flavourings. Are you seeing a pattern here? Basically, mashed consistencies make good fillings.

I’ve mashed up leftovers before and stuffed them into dumplings.

When Scout was younger, she forked together cheese and Vegemite and stuffed it into a dumpling. She showed that anything is possible.

On Monday, I’ll be hosting my second LINGER LIVE (though we aren’t cooking from LINGER) for paid subscribers. I’ll be making weeknight friendly dumplings, with two fillings - a summery zucchini, tofu and pesto one, and a more wintery mushroom and walnut dumpling. Both are vegan. The recipes are below for paid subscribers. I hope you’ll join us, but if you can’t join live, I will be sharing the video afterwards. And if you aren’t a paid subscriber, it’s not too late to upgrade:

LINGER LIVE #2: Dumplings, through the seasons