I am the gyoza king, kneel before my perfectly crimped edges
I can make GYOZA now.
This all came about after I spent the day with an older acquaintance of mine (this is the inaka - young people are ritually culled each year in a spectacular napalm-based ceremony) and he instructed me that I was to have dinner at his house. It was ‘gyoza night’ which meant the entire family was cramped into the small kitchen, furiously making gyoza with a kind of scary autonomy that only the very elite of Nike sweatshop workers could hope to accomplish.
Encouraged to join in, which I wasn’t sure to take as a “you are part of the family” or “I fricking own you, now sit down and spoon meat”, I sat down and proceeded to announce to the wife that I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, and that you might as well tie badgers to my hands and call me Sminky The Fantastic, because that would probably yield exactly the same results as giving me a bowl of gyoza filling and some skins and saying “dozo”.
So she proceeded to explain how to make gyoza. It’s not really very difficult, but there was a part of me that wished I hadn’t ‘got it’ so quickly as it obviously now coupled with the fact that everyone knows I am crap at all sports, the fact that I can ‘do’ gyoza instantly turns me into the gaijin bastion of inverse masculinity that I try so hard to keep them unaware of. I mean, I pluck my eyebrows and my bedsheets have pink hearts on them FOR CHRISTS SAKE.
Pushing my flamboyant and already quite apparent gayness aside for a second - I am now the ultimate gyoza MASTER. After getting the recipe from that lady, I have now perfected my gyoza to an almost unbelievably brilliant level. I would love to get my gyoza ’sensei’ to try them but I would be too afraid of her clawing at her face and screaming “WHYYYYYY” when she realises that her years of toil and effort have been miserably crushed by the half-arsed attempts of Jimbo the wondertwat and his frying pan of triumph. But of course, I exaggerate. Because the recipe that I got from the lady (who had a ‘reputation’ for making good gyoza) was blatantly a LIE to protect her real recipe. She told me that all the mixture contained was pork mince, cabbage, nira (a type of spring onion, but flatter) and soya sauce. Cynically, I immediately thought “bullshit” but replied with a simple “ah thank you”. I did ask whether there was anything else in the recipe such as garlic, ginger, mirin, pepper etc but she said no. I’m sure there is another ingredient but unfortunately it could be kangaroo piss for all I know.
So, I have been trying my own recipes - which have all been rather good, but not a patch on the ‘original’. Bugger it all to hell.
