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Yesterday I told you we would be making batter fried stuffed calamari today, but since I would never want to do the easy thing and only do one project at a time I decided to add brodo (Italian broth that is a combination of both beef and chicken) and Chinese dumplings to the day too.

My first project of the day was to get a few errands out of the way. I went to my mom and dad's, watched an episode of Mario Batali, stopped at Thomson's Meat Market and then went to the Heidel Hollow Egg Farm for fresh eggs.

Once I got home I headed to the kitchen where I started the brodo, separated the 10 lbs. of chicken that I bought at Thomson's into bags with Sweet Baby Rays BBQ sauce and Nature Isle Tropical Fruit Chutney where they will marinate while they freeze and then marinate some more while they thaw for the grill next week.

But for dinner tonight as promised we had the batter fried stuffed calamari and the Chinese fried dumplings and crab cakes made from the leftover filling from the calamari.

I made the dough for the dumplings first (that scared me more).

Dough:

• 10 ounces (2 cups) unbleached all-purpose flour
• About 3/4 cup just-boiled water (boiled water left to cool about 3 minutes)

Mix flour and water together with a spoon till it cools a little.


Turn out onto a floured surface and need a few minutes till smooth.
Put dough into a plastic bag, remove air and seal. Let dough sit from 15 minutes to 2 hours.

Remove dough from bag, it will be very soft and easy to work with. Break dough into small balls, the size of a superball for those of you that remember them and flatten working till thin and round about 3 inches across.

Place a tblsp. of filling in the middle, fold dough in half and pinch/gather edges together. I sauteed them in wok oil (I bought it at Wegman's) till nicely browned.



Filling:
1lb. freshly ground pork
4 small scallions diced fine
4 tblsp. rice wine vinegar
4 tblsp. soy sauce
3 cloves finely minced garlic
4 stalks baby broccoli
salt
pepper

Mix all ingredients and use in the prepared dumpling dough.






While the dumpling dough rested, I mixed the filling for the calamari and stuffed them.







Filling:
1 can lump crab meat
1/2 lb. 51-60 raw shrimp
1/4 cup Italian bread crumbs
1 egg
1 tblsp. Old Bay Seasoning
2 heaping tblsp. Miracle Whip
salt
pepper
3 cloves finely minced garlic

Clean shrimp, cut in half. Combine all ingredients and mix well.


Carefully fill each calamari tube with filling (this is rather labor intensive), I then just let them set on parchment paper till I was ready to batter them and fry them.






The batter had a lot of ingredients with some weird measurements. I don't do well with weird measurements so of course I ad-libbed a little.

Batter ingredients:
1 cup flour
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/2 cup water
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/4 tsp Baking Soda
1 Egg White
1 tsp Salt
1/2 cup Water
1/4 tsp Garlic Powder

Mix well. Dip calamari in batter and shake off excess before frying. Make sure the oil (I used canola oil) is really hot. After dropping the calamari into the oil, I had to use a spatula to loosen the calamari from the bottom of the pan a little. Do it gently so you don't tear the batter. Fry till golden brown, drain on paper towels and sprinkle lightly with salt.







That was my day. Everything turned out pretty good. The calamari should have fried for about 1/2 of a minute less to be as tender as I had hoped, but it was not a battered rubber band by any stretch of the imagination, I am just picky.

As for the dumplings, we really liked them. I think they needed a dipping sauce of some kind, so if I do them again and I will, we will need to find something to dip them in. The hubby liked everything. He even took a leftover crab cake as a sandwich for work tonight.

Well that's it for today...tomorrow night we are having spare ribs, baked potatoes and braised fennel.

Have a great night everyone!
hugs,
dina