Perilla gyouza 青じそ餃子

I have not made gyouza 餃子 for some time. Since the perilla in our herb garden is plentiful and will be soon go to flower and seed, I decided to use some for this gyouza after seeing the post at "No Recipe". Although the stuffing can be anything you like, I made a rather traditional ground pork/cabbage stuffing.



Since each stuffing is wrapped in perilla leaves the green leaves are visible through the gyouza skin.



I served 5 each as an appetizer with a mixture of rice vinegar and soy sauce (1:1) as a dipping sauce and Japanese hot mustard. The pork stuffing recipe is the same as before but I did not have garlic chives and used chopped cabbage boiled for 5 minutes with the moisture squeezed out. Since I generally don’t follow actual recipes but eye-ball quantities, please referred to a more precise recipe here.

I did not have "gyouza skins" so I used egg roll skins cut into 4 small squares. I placed one perilla leave on the skin and then the pork stuffing and formed a gyouza by wetting the edges, folding in half and then pinching the edges (again please see animated image here).



I like the entire gyouza to have a crispy skin.  I deviated from the regular way of cooking gyouza and fried both surfaces using a mixture of light olive oil and dark sesame oil until both sides were brown and crispy. I added a small amount of water and put on the lid to let the gyouza steam for 1-2 minutes. I removed the lid when the water all evaporated and further crisped up the skin.

I thought the perilla flavor would be much stronger but it was actually pretty mild. It was still a good gyouza. The egg roll skin I buy in our regular grocery store is thinner than wonton skin and we like a thinner and crispier skin.