ICSA 73: Gimme mo' momos

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TychoCelchuuu: Jan 2, 2012; This space for Rent.

Momos

Momos are one of the dumplings of choice in Tibet and Nepal. They've also become extremely popular as a street food in India, which is where I've become familiar with them. As you can imagine for a food featured in this ICSA, they're dough wrapped around filling. In India usually it's meat, vegetables, or paneer, and they're either steamed or deep-fried.

I've had what one of my Delhi-native friends says are the best momos in Delhi (although I don't really trust her taste), and some other momos besides, and honestly I'm not a fan. Part of this is because I don't eat meat, I think, and the vegetarian momos are pretty uninspiring (at least in India). Part of it is because the usual dipping sauce is pretty boring (sample recipe). In general I don't love what's called "Chinese food" in India, which is the category momos fall under, and which includes all sorts of stuff that, like American "Chinese food," is not really Chinese food.

In any case, I decided to try to jazz up the momo for my entry, because I'm living in Delhi and these are the most prominent dumplings around here.

This is your prototypical veg momo recipe (some are even plainer): a flour wrapper, filled with some lightly cooked and lightly spiced chopped vegetables. Pretty basic. Not bad-tasting, but compared to almost literally every other food in India, pretty uninspiring. I want to make a better momo.

Maximomos

For my maximomos I didn't want to reinvent the wheel, but just tweak and add some things to make the final result more tantalizing. Here are our ingredients (ignore the bottles of sauces - I just took out all my Chinese stuff in case I wanted to use any for the dipping sauce).

The first step is to dice and then cook the mushrooms. The mushrooms start off cooking in water. Once that's all boiled away, add oil and cook until mostly crispy. Cooking in water first paradoxically helps cook the water out of the mushrooms. If you start them in oil they just suck up oil before they've lost their water, and they don't get as crispy unless you add way more oil. We don't want the momo filling to be oily, so this process avoids that.

Meanwhile prep the rest of the filling stuff.

After the mushrooms, we cook our aromatics in the oil: garlic, ginger, and green onions. The ginger is not a typical momo addition, I think, and it adds some good depth. (Even the garlic and green onion are absent from some recipes, and they too add depth.) Then we add sliced curry leaves, another unusual addition. These add a very interesting flavor and make the dish more Indian-inspired than the typical momo.

The curry leaves also taste good with another unusual ingredient, ground Sichuan peppercorns. Both the curry leaves and the peppercorn add fragrance to the filling in interesting ways. Then we add carrots and cabbage, the typical fillings, and cook for a bit. Finally, the last secret ingredient is added: sauerkraut. Also there's been salt added at each point, although not too much, because the sauerkraut adds lots of salt. Everything is mixed and set aside to cool.

The wrappers are just maida (effectively white flour), a bit of oil and salt, and water. One coffee cup's worth of maida, kneaded then set aside to rest a bit, makes 15 momo wrappers.

The wrappers are filled and shaped the way I always see momos shaped by the street vendors.

Like I said above, typically momos are steamed or deep fried. Steaming is a little too boring and deep frying is fun but a bit of a production, so I'm doing the pot sticker method of starting them in oil, adding some water and covering, then finishing in the oil. I threw in some green onions to flavor the oil and the water.

Sauce

Meanwhile let's make our dipping sauce.

Again I wanted a bit of China/neighboring countries (Tibet, Nepal, etc.) meets India here, this time with China as the base, so we're starting with scallion oil: green onions cooked in oil for a while until crispy.

When the green onions are crispy, they are removed. Then we add cumin seeds, shortly after followed by red chilies, shorty after followed by sliced garlic, shortly after followed by sesame seeds.

Then, soy sauce, which gets briefly cooked before removing from heat.

A bit of black Chinkiang vinegar is added and we're done.

Final Results

Verdict: success in every dimension, I think. All the changes I made to the typical momo worked out well. The more thoroughly-cooked mushrooms were delicious, as expected. The curry leaves plus the Sichuan peppercorns add some complex bright flavors, the aromatics add some deep rich flavors, and the sauerkraut adds freshness and acidity, plus some salt. I'd say the sauerkraut is the biggest winner, and if you only make one change to the typical momo, adding something funky and fermented is where it's at.

The cooking method works perfectly, as it ought to. The green onions actually added some flavor to the cooking oil, and in general the crunchy bottoms plus the soft sides and top were a delightful combination.

The dipping sauce was quite good too. The vinegar adds some bite and brightness that helps a lot, the chili adds spiciness, and the fact that the sauce is an oil-based one helps add a lot of richness, because the momos themselves don't have a ton of oil.

In the end I would say I am very happy with these compared to your typical momo. I'd just as happily make these as I would any other kind of dumpling.