Above the Fold

Share this post

Dumpling Digest: Tasting the Rainbow, Part 3

abovethefolddumplings.substack.com

Dumpling Digest: Tasting the Rainbow, Part 3

Get your Instagram ready, it's time to meet the 🌈 🥟 dump-fluencers. (I'll keep workshopping that name, promise.)

Leah Mennies
Sep 23, 2021
3
3
Share this post

Dumpling Digest: Tasting the Rainbow, Part 3

abovethefolddumplings.substack.com

Welcome to Above the Fold, a free newsletter all about dumplings and the people who make them. Like what you see? Subscribe and it’ll come straight to your inbox twice a month (and sometimes more)!


Rainbow dumpling imagery via Instagram/Brendan Pang

Before diving into the task at hand this week—more rainbow dumplings, naturally—I’m excited to share that Above the Fold was featured in a recent installment of Substack’s What to Read series! To learn a little bit more about yours truly and the mission behind this newsletter, check it out below. (And if that interview brought you here, welcome to the land of the dumpling nerds. We’re so happy to have you.) 

Substack
What To Read: Leah Mennies is digging deep into dumplings
This week, we interviewed Leah Mennies, who writes Above the Fold, a publication that spotlights people dedicated to the art of dumpling-making. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity…
Read more
2 years ago · 30 likes · 6 comments

So far this month, we’ve explored the high-profile restaurants that have mastered multi-colored soup dumplings, har gow, and pot stickers, as well as small businesses specializing in everything from rainbow empanadas to king mandu. 

Today, it’s time to check out a third population of rainbow dumpling pros: The bloggers and Instagrammers working technicolor magic with powders and veggie purees, a.k.a. the rainbow dump-fluencers. Has a nice ring to it, right? No? Oh well, let’s get into it.

🌈 Linda Miller Nicholson, Salty Seattle

As early as 2016, Nicholson was using vegetable purees and condiments like harissa to transform pasta dough into stuffed works of art—the earliest evidence of which appears to be this groovy rainbow ravioli, created for AllRecipes after Nicholson “developed this technique as a way to sneak healthy veggies into her son's diet.”

Since then, Nicholson has published a book—Pasta, Pretty Please—and continued to hone her mastery of rainbow pasta dough. Here are a couple of favorite creations:

Inception ravioli (click through for a video on how it’s made):

saltyseattle
A post shared by @saltyseattle

Cute striped bottoni filled with braised greens and cheese:

saltyseattle
A post shared by @saltyseattle

There are many, many more where these came from on Nicholson’s Instagram (including, even, rainbow raviolis designed to resemble condoms). And if you want to try your hand at rainbow pasta-making without having to measure and knead the dough yourself, she sells it! Visit Salty Seattle’s site to order rainbow pasta dough ($60 for 12 servings’ worth, plus shipping). 

🌈 Brendan Pang, Bumplings

In 2018, Brendan Pang posted one of the most beautiful photos I've ever seen: This 32-part gradient grid of hand-dyed dumplings, shaped so precisely they appear to have been molded from clay.

brendan_pang
A post shared by @brendan_pang

Brendan is an Australian chef and MasterChef Australia alum who draws on his Chinese and Mauritian heritage to make all manner of dumplings (among other delicious dishes). He has since channeled his dumpling prowess into a mobile dumpling kitchen, called Bumplings

1
, which operates out of an Airstream trailer in Perth, as well as a cookbook, called This Is a Book About Dumplings.

The book devotes an entire chapter to colorful dumplings in flavors like chile crab (with blue wrappers), miso roasted eggplant (with purple wrappers), and curried beef (yellow wrappers): “I truly believe you eat with your eyes, and for me the enjoyment starts when something that looks delicious catches your eye—before it’s even hit your palate,” he writes in the chapter’s intro.

Bonus pic: This ombre dumpling Christmas tree 🤯

brendan_pang
A post shared by @brendan_pang

🌈 Erin Boukall, Culinary Calgary

Around the time that I first spotted Brendan Pang's work, I also noticed that of Erin Boukall, a culinary instructor and blogger based in—you guessed it—Calgary, who started tinkering early on with vegetable juice as well as natural dyes and powders from Suncore Foods (more on them below) and Rawnice.

Check out this neatly labeled lineup of doughs and what was used to color them…

culinarycalgary
A post shared by @culinarycalgary

…as well as this rainbow dumpling circle…

culinarycalgary
A post shared by @culinarycalgary

…and these funky folds!

culinarycalgary
A post shared by @culinarycalgary

🌈 Mei Yee, nm_meiyee

Everything Mei Yee makes (typically elaborate baked goods) is an edible work of art, and these dumplings are no different. Yee is a brand ambassador for Suncore Foods, a company launched in 2016 that specializes in “Supercolor” plant-based powders made from ingredients like taro yam, blue spirulina, and ebony carrots, some of which were used for the below dumplings. (Click through for a video; the recipe for these dumplings can be found in the caption).

nm_meiyee
A post shared by @nm_meiyee

What makes these dumplings all the more impressive is that they use a crystal dumpling dough (the style used in har gow), which is incredibly delicate to work with. It’s also very satisfying to watch the pastel, uncooked dumplings deepen in hue once they’ve steamed (jump to 2:04 for the big reveal).

If you’re not ready to commit to an upwards-of-$20 bag of powder, Suncore offers sampler packs—mine just arrived in the mail last week, and I’m planning to use it to make multi-colored pierogi.

🌈 Christine Wong, Conscious Cooking (COOKING CLASS ALERT!)

Sunday, September 26th is National Dumpling Day! While I tend not to put too much stock into national food holidays as they’re typically just marketing ploys, it was TMI Foods, a.k.a. the holding company behind Twin Marquis, that petitioned this holiday into being in 2015. Twin Marquis makes the best store-bought dumpling wrappers out there—they’re the ones of choice for Mei Mei and countless others—so basically, what I’m saying is I am fully on board with National Dumpling Day.

conscious_cooking
A post shared by @conscious_cooking

Which brings us to Christine Wong, a blogger and extremely advanced dumpling-maker (see: above) who frequently teaches dumpling workshops—I took an awesome crystal dumpling one from her last spring. She’s teaching one such workshop in honor of National Dumpling Day this coming Saturday, September 25, where participants will learn how to make dumpling wrappers from scratch as well as how to color them with natural dyes. Bonus: 20% of proceeds (tickets are $30) will be donated to support to this fund set up by Local Roots NYC.

conscious_cooking
A post shared by @conscious_cooking

In addition to those tied-dyed stunners above, Christine also created these autumnal dumplings, so she very much knows what she’s talking about.

SIGN UP HERE!

Above the Fold was created by Leah Mennies. Logo + design elements by Claudia Mak.

1

Did I debate including Brendan in the first newsletter about trend-setting restaurants? Yes! But his rainbow dumplings are more tied to his online presence and less to his restaurant, which came later. Potato-potahto, honestly, but in case anyone else overthinks anything as much as I do, now you know.

3
Share this post

Dumpling Digest: Tasting the Rainbow, Part 3

abovethefolddumplings.substack.com
3 Comments
Andrea Gyorody
Writes Weekly Special
Sep 24, 2021

These gradients are giving me life! Seriously, so satisfying to look at. But do the dyes and powders also impart flavor?

Expand full comment
Reply
2 replies by Leah Mennies and others
2 more comments…
TopNewCommunity

No posts

Ready for more?

© 2023 Leah Mennies
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start WritingGet the app
Substack is the home for great writing