A year ago during Friday at the Hitchin Beer Festival, I was thankful that I had taken a surplus batch of cooked spring rolls as the food options ceased for evening. I made note that for next year I should try and do the same; beer festivals of small town size do not attract a variety of food stall holders especially when cooking is quite restrictive at the venue. This time round, I wanted to take gyoza and vegetarian mandu so I had spent last night preparing them.
An array of dumplings
In the previous week, Yvan constructed a very good pink coleslaw consisting of Chinese cabbage, beetroot, home-pickled chilli and home-made mayonnaise. With the cabbage component also featuring in the dumplings it was easy to create a simplified version with my lunch. In addition to the umeboshi, it dawned on me after assembly that my lunch was quite ‘girly’ – nothing smacks of feminity like the colour pink. By semi-coincidence (I knew it was this month) International Women’s Day had just past.
A Pink Lunch with Dumplings
Perhaps with the moon shaped gyoza and pink food stuffs I subconsciously was arming myself for the full two day slog of volunteering for an event more commonly associated with bearded, beer-bellied men? I did rather enjoy my rather unusual beer festival meal washed down with some very good ale.
Top tier
Top tier: gyoza (pork, prawn, ginger, garlic, leek, Chinese cabbage) and vegetarian mandu (Korean) -styled dumpling (tofu, shiitake, ginger, garlic, leek, Chinese cabbage) on a bed of shredded cabbage and spring onion
Bottom tier
Bottom tier: rice with umeboshi, pink coleslaw
Not pictured: 2 take-away containers of gyoza, 1 small container of 5 mandu and a bottle of sriracha – these were for sharing around! Probably good that I did, the pan-fry-then-steam method of cooking was a little on the oily side.
