Mushroom dumplings for Donna Hay Challenge #10
Yay! it’s finally here… Ten days too late but an awesome challenge for the 10th installment of Donna Hay Styling and Photography Challenge. Wow… can’t believe it is number 10 already! I had so much fun in the process and I hope you guys learned a thing or two in the proces. I know I did! This challenge came about a bit late as I was very busy and swamped with work, in between painting the new studio and doing the floor too. And thank heavens that is finished now, although it is still a mess and still empty but the boring bits are done. It’s moving on to the fun parts now! This beautiful photo (above) is from Donna Hay magazine number 62 from april/may of 2012 and the photograph is from Chris Court, Styling by Steve Pearce. DEADLINE AUGUST 31st!
Above you see my version of this delicious recipe of mushroom dumplings with a very tasty broth. My biggest issue was with finding the correct background. I think it is in the original with old aluminium or some sort of steel. Running out of time I bought a new piece of aluminium and hoped I could get it distressed. Well, that only happens when you don’t want it to! I had hoped I could get it to be damaged but man, this was one hardy bit of metal. Maybe putting it outside for a couple of weeks will give it the desired look but for now it is way too new as you can see and that in a large part determines the atmosphere of the shot. It was also the first time I was shooting in my new studio and trust me when I see that it takes a while to get used to a new lighting situation so that was a bit challenging as well.
In the ‘making of’ shots you can see the mess still in the studio! Haha… Taken quickly with my Iphone but I think it shows the setup more or less. The light is coming from behind right and the light in my new studio with missing curtains is a bit too light for this shot. it had to be a bit more moody but I thought I’ll go with this for now. I didn’t want to have you wait any longer!
I think I will leave my background outside for a while now that I have done the challenge. The recipe itself is easy, but replicating the mood and the right setting is tricky I think. It also didn’t exactly fit my own style which in a way is the whole purpose of the challenge right? To work outside of your own comfort zone and to learn something new! I learned that I do love an iron background… 
Just gotta get it to look right (read;old)
The filling is quite delicious and mmm, you will love it! The recipe uses galangal or laos. If you cannot find that ginger would be ok to use as a substitute. I will mention the possible substitutes for some of the asian ingredients as well in the recipe. But if you cannot find something feel free to use another ingredient you think might work.
Because I was so late with posting and because I will be away too from next week till the end of the month I think it is only fair to have this challenge run until the end of August. So you have 1,5 months to complete the challenge. That would almost be enough time to distress a piece of metal…! 
For completeness, here are the rules for the Challenge. Above all I hope you have fun with this new recipe and I look forward to seeing all the awesome entries!
Mushroom dumplings with ginger and shiitake broth
Yield: 4-6
Prep Time: 15 mins
Cook Time: 20 mins
Total Time: 35 mins
Ingredients:
- 4 cups chicken stock (1 liter)
- 2 cups water (500 ml)
- 10 cm ginger (peeled and sliced)
- 3 cloves garlic (lightly crushed)
- 50g dried shiitake mushrooms
- 1 tablespoon chinese rice wine (Shaoxing)
- 1 tablespoon caster sugar
- 100g fresh shiitake mushrooms
- micro herbs (thinly sliced red chilli and chilli oil to serve)
Mushroom and galangal dumplings
- 1 tablespoon peanut oil
- 400g mixed asian mushrooms
- 2 cm galangal (peeled and finely grated)
- 1 red chili (chopped)
- 3 cloves garlic (crushed)
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon chinese black vinegar (Chinkiang)
- 2 tablespoons oyster sauce
- 1/4 cup coriander (chopped, cilantro)
- 24 wonton wrappers
Directions:
| To make the mushroom and galangal dumplings, heat the oil in a non-stick frying pan over high heat. Add the mushroom, galangal, chili and garlic and cook for 2 minutes. Add the soy, vinegar and oyster sauce and cook for a further 2 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir through the coriander. Set aside to cool completely. Place the wonton wrappers on a clean bench top dusted with rice flour and brush the edges of the wrappers with water. Place 2 teaspoons of the mushroom mixture into the center of each wonton wrapper and bring each corner together to form a pyramid shape. Cover and set aside. |
|
| Place the stock, water, ginger, garlic, dried shiitake mushrooms, rice wine and sugar in a saucepan over high heat and bring to the boil. Reduce heat to low and cook for 15 minutes. Strain the broth and return to the saucepan. Increase the heat to medium, add the dumplings and fresh shiitake mushrooms and cook for 3-4 minutes or until wontons are transparant. Top with microherbs and chili and serve with chili oil. Serves 4-6 | |
Note
Some of the ingredients in this recipe might be a little harder to find if you do not have an Asian store nearby. Some of the substitutes you could use are:
Galangal - you can use ginger here
Shaoxing rice wine - sherry is a reasonable substitute
Chinese black vinegar - a mild balsamic might be a good substitute here although it is not entirely the same. If you do not have balsamic, try a regular good vinegar
Dried Shiitake mushrooms - these might be hard to find too although the dried mushrooms are quite essential for the taste of the broth. Try another type of dried mushroom you can find
Recipe by Donna Hay Magazine
- Once a month (on the 3rd of the month) I will give you a recipe plus the accompanying photo out of the Donna Hay magazine. I will try to make it seasonal but can’t promise anything.
- You have that same month to produce your post. You can post it any day you like just as long as you finish it before the end of that month at the latest.
- You have to produce that recipe, alterations to the recipe are allowed to make sure any dietary restrictions are met. But only minor changes!
- You have to cook and STYLE the recipe trying to replicate the photo as best as you can. If you think you can do a better job then the original photo, by all means feel free to make your own changes to the styling.
- Shoot the dish and then write a blog post about it. It would be great to add notes on how you took the photo and how you styled the dish, so that other people can learn too.
- Link back to this months blog post about the challenge and link back to the Donna Hay Challenge page here
- Leave a message on the post that is up here for that month, saying that you completed the challenge and link to the post on your site so others can find it too.
- If you want to use the original photo in your blog post as well as the recipe be sure to link back to the Donna Hay website plus the photographers website. They will both always be mentioned in the monthly challenge posts.
Each month a winner will be picked who will be featured in the Hall of Fame page. If you like you can add a badge to your site saying that you are taking part in this competition. The badge is featured below and should link back to this page.
Above all this challenge is about having fun styling and photographing a dish by taking Donna Hay as our great example. You can join all months or whenever you feel like joining in. Using an example of the great photographers that Donna works with, I always find that it is a good learning experience to see how did they light the scene, where does the light come from and how did they manage to make it look so beautiful. Try and analyze all of that and then come up with your own version.
Appetizer
Asian
Bread
Breakfast
Desserts & other sweets
Healthy
Would you please send some over! Great Simone, mouthwatering! And your pictures are gorgeous, not only the food I love the behind the scenes as well! Studio is read, I guess?
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Simone (junglefrog) — July 14th, 2012 at 06:08
Well almost ready. We still need to install racks for all the props (collected a few over the years!)
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Simone,
Very excited for this challenge. What is that red thing in the background in the bowl and bottle?
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Simone (junglefrog) — July 14th, 2012 at 06:07
The red things in the smaller bowl are chopped red chili’s and the bottle is chili oil, although I put sweet chili sauce in there. Didn’t have chili oil and the soup is spicy enough without more chili!
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Sarah — July 31st, 2012 at 18:50
Hi Simone,
Just submitted my photo for this challenge. The dish was not too difficult to cook but getting the ingredients and the props was a challenge! Very happy with the final result.
Simone (junglefrog) — August 1st, 2012 at 07:49
Gorgeous result Sarah! I’m so impresssed that you even used nails and two boards to get it all together!
Great choice! This looks like a fun and challenging picture to recreate, plus the recipe sounds delish! We love mushrooms at my house, so this is right up our alley. Glad I have until end of August – I’m going to have to figure out a way to get that background and a spoon like that!
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Simone (junglefrog) — July 14th, 2012 at 06:09
That background… I am sure you can think of a good substitute. I’m still a little unhappy about the fact that I sort of didn’t get the right background but what can you do?
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Where’s the substitutions you said you’d put in the recipe?
I have some Asian stores around here that I can probably find most of this stuff at but some people might have trouble. You may want to put cilantro in parenthesis for coriander. We call it cilantro in the states but for some reason we call the seeds coriander but I think the recipe is calling for the leafy part not the seeds.
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Simone (junglefrog) — July 14th, 2012 at 06:10
Ah… good point Paula! I have added the substitutes I could think of into the recipe now and good point also on the coriander/cilantro. I normally try and add both names but was a tiny bit in a hurry!
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That soup is gorgeous and your dumplimgs look so beautiful (especially the filling)! Great shot too. I’m looking forward to seeing what the participants will come up with.
Cheers,
Rosa
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Simone (junglefrog) — July 14th, 2012 at 06:10
Thanks Rosa. Love making dumplings!
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Beautiful recipe of ‘my kind of food’. Even tho’ not in the Challenge will be delighted to copy and surprise some friends! Love to see how you work, love the final photo!!
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Simone (junglefrog) — July 14th, 2012 at 06:11
O yes definitely try the recipe Eha. It is incredibly delicious. Tom even remarked that for a vegetarian dish (not counting the chicken stock!) it was incredibly flavorsome and he didn’t miss any meat. Which is saying something..
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oooh great challenge! I hope I will get to make this one!!
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Simone (junglefrog) — July 14th, 2012 at 19:57
O I hope you have time to join Jenn, that would be great! It’s totally delicious this soup so for taste alone it would be worth it. Not sure if you have glutenfree dumplings though…
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Learning a great deal about taking food photos from your blog, thanks. I imagine a lot of time is spent behind the scene before taking the shots. Great photos and dumplings look delicious.
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Simone (junglefrog) — July 14th, 2012 at 22:06
Glad you find the posts helpful Norma! Maybe it is time to join in the fun…
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Love the last shot on the Asian wrapper. Everything about your shot is more visually appealing to me. That is the greatest complement to the Donna Hay Challenge… taking a fantastic idea and making it better. The only “thing” she managed to do was to get a darker broth, which is more appealing – but everything else about your work leaves me wanting!
LOVE LOVE LOVE the last shot.
Valerie
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Simone (junglefrog) — July 14th, 2012 at 22:06
Thanks so much Valerie! I am loving that Asian newspaper…
I carefully cleaned it after and saved it as prop… It might come in handy some day!
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I have long wished to try chines food in restaurants , especially dumplings but I always hesitated. I won’t hesitate anymore when I make it myself.
I’ve got to find myself an old piece of metal! I am pretty sure I’ll find one at my parents house’s junk room
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Simone (junglefrog) — July 15th, 2012 at 09:45
Dumplings are so delicious! I love them in just about any form they come in. This particular article that had the recipes of the dumplings had loads of others in there too which I will definitely be trying out too. Hope you like these as well. Wonderful spicy broth!
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You are welcome to join in my monthly food blogger event THE SOUP KITCHEN, here for entry details and current theme offering a new theme each month. All bloggers are welcome, hope to see you participate soon.
Fab soup recipe and I love the dumpling filling.
Amazing photography too.
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We don’t like mushrooms!
But since I have till the end of August, will see if I can substitute them with something else……
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Paula Thomas — July 16th, 2012 at 16:27
I’m not a mushroom fan either. I plan on using some mushrooms, at least the dried ones for the broth but I’m not going to use much if any fresh mushrooms. I haven’t decided yet what to use in it’s place.
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Simone (junglefrog) — July 16th, 2012 at 19:22
Girls… how can you not like mushrooms..?
Ok I guess everyone has it’s own taste but I am convinced both of you can think of a suitable alternative to fill the dumplings! 
Oh this looks awesome! Can’t wait to try it. And the props look pretty manageable.
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I’ve just bought the spoon
I should buy two, but probably I will manage to the Asian shop once again, even if only for mushrooms 
I can’t wait, I missed quite a lot of challenges lately, it’s so good there is still a month to try it 
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Got my ingredients today and planning on making my own gluten free wrappers. Planning on making it this weekend.
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Simone (junglefrog) — August 14th, 2012 at 22:39
Great Paula! Can’t wait to see how you go!
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Oh wow, made this today and it was really good! Hope to have the blog post up soon so I can enter
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Just entered! Hope it went through right…
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I made it. I’m not very proud of the output, but I hope that will get me into the routine of participating more often.
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Simone, I’m yet to do this but want to. My only probelm is that living where I am, I cannot find most of the ingredients! And no one likes mushrooms here.
Would my post qualify if I made vegetables dumplings with a broth. It would be like using an entirely different recipe as I would have to make major adaptations……
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Thanks for hosting this great challenge each month Simone. I thought it was finally time I participated so have just posted my attempt on my site. I’m not very happy with it, but it was definitely fun learning along the way.
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ok finally got mine entered. I had planned on doing it a week earlier and just as I was about to make it I realized I was out of chicken stock. I only use homemade stock so made some more and made this last week. Making the gluten free wrappers was the most challenging part but they turned out pretty well and were tasty too.
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Simone (junglefrog) — August 31st, 2012 at 23:27
Well done for making your own wrappers too paula! I’m totally impressed!
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Hi Simone, I am so glad that you are continuing the challenge it is such a great photography and styling work-out. I have just included my link.
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