rice cake dumplings

Recently on episode 318 of Season 3 Happy Together, Solbi introduced a new type of dumpling filling consisting of bacon, Korean rice cake and cheese. I've tried bacon-rice cakes before at a Korean restaurant in China and they tasted really nice but I've never had the combination with cheese before!

The original recipe used Korean mandu-pi but I used Chinese gyoza wrappers instead. If you can't get small-sized cylindrical rice cakes, you can always just trim them so they fit in the wrappers. I also recommend thinly sliced bacon - it's easier to wrap!

Recipe: Positive Dumplings by Solbi 

Ingredients (5 dumplings):

• 5 strips of thinly sliced bacon
• 5 cylindrical rice cakes 
• 5 dumpling wrappers
• some mozzarella cheese 
• olive oil for brushing

What to do:

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees.
2. If using frozen rice cakes, cook the rice cakes in a pot of boiling water for 30-60 seconds. Drain the rice cakes.
3. Wrap a piece of rice cake in a strip of bacon. 
4. Put the bacon wrapped rice cake on top of a dumpling wrapper and add some cheese. 
5. Wrap the dumpling.
6. Brush olive oil over the dumpling wrapper so the dumpling skin will turn crispy but not dry.
7. Place it in the oven for 15 minutes. 
8. Serve with chili sauce, sweet chilli sauce or honey.

The wrapping is crispy and the rice cakes make it chewy. And just when you think the dish is getting bland, the saltiness from bacon gives it extra flavour.