My friend Shailesh, who is originally from Nepal, and his wife Aimee, invited me and a handful of other friends over this weekend to make dinner. We learned to make momos. I’d never made dumplings before, and while I’m sure I’ve eaten something conceptually similar, these won’t soon be forgotten.
They were out-of-this-world good.
I mean it.
The sauce? I could have sipped it from a bowl if it hadn’t lit my mouth on fire.
And dumplings are super easy to make! Who knew? It goes a bit something like this:
Take a giant bowl of filling (no idea what this includes other than ground turkey)
Dumpling papers, which are essentially squares of pasta
A bowl of water to get your fingers and the pasta a wee bit wet
And then watch your favorite Nepali go to town.
Once you’ve done this 3,000 times — place them in a steamer for 12 minutes.
Then top with a variety of excellent spicy sauces,
Some very American salad
And Greek spanikopita.
Inhale. Repeat.
It was fun that the dumpling table included: two Austrians, a man raised in the Azors, a Puerto Rican, a woman born in Columbia to a bull fighting father, and two American girls, plus our Nepalese host and his family. I live for this kind of diversity in Arizona! It was a delight to hear everyone’s stories and what brought them to my desert.
A great night of community among new friends.
~K