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Dumpling Update: Iroquois Leaf Bread
Jul. 8th, 2011 10:49 amAs I suspected when I first saw the recipe, these are delicious. Just corn kernels, pulped, and corn meal mixed into a batter, wrapped in fresh corn husks and steamed over water and corn silk, they are sweet and taste intensely of corn. Wheat-free, no added salt, sugar or fat (unless you eat them with butter and salt, as we did and as the recipe recommends, but they are also quite good plain). Serious nom, this is a recipe I will make frequently and hope to have freezable surplus so as to be able to enjoy the taste of fresh summer corn in the winter. A June recipe, incidentally, but I didn't get a chance to make it until now, what with one thing and another. There are two more similar fresh corn "tamale" recipes under July, I'm looking forward to trying them (the book uses "tamale" in quotes like that for these particular recipes. I'm not certain what the distinction is).
I actually made a double batch last night (well, almost a double recipe I suppose, I cleaned out the Vegetable Patch of all their yellow corn but that was 11 ears rather than the 12 called for, but I also added more cornmeal to get the consistency right (or what seemed right to me and my SiL, neither of us having made this stuff before) and ended up making the full number of dumpings that the recipe predicted by wrapping a 1/2 cup of batter for each one), because my whole family was together for a couple of days, which has been nice but tiring. It doesn't take much extra before I feel stretched too thin and overextended, which is super frustrating. Anyway, the dumplings are not hard to make, but they do take a long time, especially doubling the recipe - husking the corn carefully to try to preserve the husks to make good wrappers, pulping the corn in small portions in the blender (the recipe calls for a food processor but my mom doesn't have one), wrapping 24 dumplings (again, not a hard fold to do, but by the time I'd done 24 of them my shoulders were pretty sore) and then they steam for an hour, so it's a good thing this wasn't meant to be dinner. The exteriors cool off enough to handle easily fairly quickly, but they stay hot inside their individual wrappers until they are opened. My niece drowned hers in butter and loved them while my mom had hers plain and also loved them.
I actually made a double batch last night (well, almost a double recipe I suppose, I cleaned out the Vegetable Patch of all their yellow corn but that was 11 ears rather than the 12 called for, but I also added more cornmeal to get the consistency right (or what seemed right to me and my SiL, neither of us having made this stuff before) and ended up making the full number of dumpings that the recipe predicted by wrapping a 1/2 cup of batter for each one), because my whole family was together for a couple of days, which has been nice but tiring. It doesn't take much extra before I feel stretched too thin and overextended, which is super frustrating. Anyway, the dumplings are not hard to make, but they do take a long time, especially doubling the recipe - husking the corn carefully to try to preserve the husks to make good wrappers, pulping the corn in small portions in the blender (the recipe calls for a food processor but my mom doesn't have one), wrapping 24 dumplings (again, not a hard fold to do, but by the time I'd done 24 of them my shoulders were pretty sore) and then they steam for an hour, so it's a good thing this wasn't meant to be dinner. The exteriors cool off enough to handle easily fairly quickly, but they stay hot inside their individual wrappers until they are opened. My niece drowned hers in butter and loved them while my mom had hers plain and also loved them.