"Potsticker" Experiment

Today I finished off a culinary experiment started earlier this week during my mini-vacation. Pictured here you see potstickers. Sort of.

I say “sort of” because these aren’t potstickers as you’d expect to be served in any Asian restaurant in America. These are filled with bacon, caramelized onions and cave-aged gruyere, then topped with a little more finely-shredded gruyere and browned butter. They were supposed to have parsley over all to add a little color, but I forgot that part.

I put these together on Monday. The onions took about three hours to caramelize slowly. Because I’m not entirely insane I used store-bought potsticker wrappers for this. Sure, homemade would have had more structure but I didn’t feel like adding a number of hours to the project. After they were assembled the potstickers were placed on a cookie sheet and frozen then moved to a zippy until I would have the time to cook them.

These were cooked in the style of potstickers. First they were pan-fried until the bottoms were very brown. Then water was added and the lid clapped on to allow them to steam. When they’d cooked through the lid was removed to allow the remaining water to boil away.

The verdict? These things are good. More substantial wrappers would have been nice. As would have salted butter for the browned butter. But aside from that these things were damn fine. I’m not sure what possessed me to create this dish but I’m glad that I followed my instinct on this one. Served with a 2004 Bonny Doon Grignolino d’Asti and the pictured sauteed carrots and peas with mint it made for a nice capper to an otherwise lackluster Saturday.

The best part? I still have most of the zippy left in the freezer, so I get to have another three or four meals just like this.