A recent post by PetuniaLee reminded me of the days when I was a poor varsity student overseas flatting with a (mainland) Chinese couple. My best memories with them was when they decided to hold their jiaozi parties. There were endless... really ENDLESS... number of jiaozi. Imagine buying a 5kg bag of plain flour just for the jiaozi skin!!! Everyone would be in the kitchen and each person would have certain jiaozi duties, like one would be preparing the meat/vegetable stuffing, another kneading the dough, another rolling out the skin, another wrapping and sealing the jiaozi pouches, and yet another responsible for boiling and dishing out the jiaozi. Every time jiaozi-making had to slowdown because there was a bottle-neck somewhere along the entire process, people would double up in their duties to smoothen the flow.
Thinking back, we had a whole jiaozi production line going!!!
We loved having these jiaozi parties, especially in winter. With all the activities in the kitchen, and the constant steam coming from the pot of boiling water, we didn't even need to turn on any heater to keep warm! Best part was of course having these piping hot jiaozi dunked in a bowl of vinegar/julienned ginger/chilli powder mixture, and squaffing it all down!! And accompanying it would be a cappella Chinese folk songs, sung by my flatmates (really good semi-operatic voices), their friends, and English songs sung by my friends. And we didn't even need alcohol to have a good party :-)
Ahhh, the simpler times..... the best of times.....
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