Think again…

The next time I think of doing something, it certainly would be a good idea to think again before I get on with it.

You see, there was a little bit of some pian sip (our wanton-like meat dumpling) skin…

…sitting in the freezer and that morning, I thought I would use them to make some pian sip soup for breakfast. Yes, we can buy the skin from the market – we do not need to make out own.

To start off, I had to wrap the dumplings and to do that, I put on a skin a little bit of minced meat…

…to which I had added a pinch of salt and mixed thoroughly and then I folded the skin into a triangle…

Having done that, I rolled the triangle around my thumb like this…

…and that would be one dumpling done. I do not know why it is done like this but I have seen the people at the stalls doing it this way so I just followed. I remember in the old days, they would just roll up the skin below the meat filling to sort of seal it up like this…

I guess it does not really matter whichever way we choose to do it.

In the meantime, I had to cook the soup and for that, I just boiled some water, threw in two or three cloves of garlic, peeled and a few minced meat balls. What I know is at the shops, they would boil some pork bones for the stock to make the soup and they would keep adding water the whole morning/day through so after sometime, it would be so diluted that what you would be getting would be nothing more than water with fragrant oil (lard), chio cheng (light soy sauce) and msg added. I did not have any light soy sauce in the house so I added a spoonful or two of fish sauce and a pinch of chicken stock cube to make up for the lack of ingredients in the soup.

I also had to prepare the garnishing so I peeled a shallot, cut it into thin slices and fried it in a little bit of oil in a pan till golden brown. I also got some spring onion growing in my garden and chopped them finely…

…and I was ready to roll!

Then I boiled some water to cook the dumplings. I did not want to just throw them into the clear soup in case the flour on the skin would make it cloudy and render it less palatable. Once the skin turned translucent, no longer white…

…they were done!

I drained them well, put them in a bowl and poured in the soup and garnished with the aforementioned fried shallot and chopped spring onion for the added fragrance and taste and served…

Yes, I would say it was very nice, as good as any outside…

…or perhaps even better and the added bonus would be the fact that there was no oil/lard added and no msg other than the bit that was probably in the fish sauce and the chicken stock cube.

However, considering all the work that I had to go through just to dish out a bowl for breakfast, I would think it would be a better idea just to go out to one of the nearby coffee shops and have one…

…there for only RM2.50 at some places, RM2.80 at others.

No, I did not use all the skin and I just put the rest back into the freezer – maybe my missus would want to use it one fine day for whatever purpose she had bought them for but one thing’s for sure, I definitely would think again should I ever feel like cooking my own pian sip another time…and decide otherwise.