Turn an Overflowing Garden Into a Batch of Dumplings

It’s flying fast, now, the garden; each day I collect a mélange of vegetables or berries. From day to day, there’s rarely enough of any one crop to make a big batch of, say, eggplant parmesan or blackberry jam, so it piles up in the kitchen as every meal becomes some variation of primavera something.

When fatigue eventually sets in—and it will—it’s time to start thinking about dumplings, the perfect way to move any garden produce out of your kitchen and into the freezer.

Stuff ‘em in ravioli

Few vehicles are as perfect as the filled pasta. Ravioli, tortellini, agnilotti—the shape is irrelevant. The main point is to bang out some pasta sheets, and turn your garden goods into a filling. All of your nightshades, from tomatoes to eggplant to peppers are suited for this purpose. Zucchini and squash? Throw ‘em in there. Toss together almost any vegetables, add some olive oil, some garlic, and a lot of cheese, and you’ve got the makings of a filled pasta destined for the middle of winter.

Freeze your filled pasta, uncooked, on a parchment-lined baking sheet, uncovered. Once they’re frozen enough to hold their shape, toss them into a freezer bag, get all the air out (here is where vacuum bags really shine), label them, label them again because you likely didn’t listen a moment ago, and put them in the freezer.

Come winter, you don’t even need to defrost them; toss them right into boiling salted water and enjoy summer’s spoils. If you don’t feel free enough to just sauté veggies together with some cheese, consult The Ravioli Cookbook, or follow my recipe below.

Summer squash ravioli

Ingredients:

Shred the zucchini, skin on, into a bowl. Sprinkle on 1 tablespoon of salt and mix it into the zucchini. Allow the squash to sit, covered on the counter, for one hour. When you return, wring out the zucchini as best as you can, putting the water aside for something else. (It tastes great, but we don’t need it for this recipe, but you can use it as you would stock in another recipe).

In a sauté pan, heat up the olive oil, add the garlic to the pan, and keep it moving until you can smell it in the air. Now add the zucchini to the pan, and continue stirring it for 6-7 minutes, until it stops releasing water. Spread the zucchini out in the pan, and stop stirring for one minute, allowing it to brown on one side. Flip the zucchini over so it can brown on the other side. Season it with salt and pepper to taste, and take it off the stovetop to cool. Once it reaches room temperature, mix with the cheeses in a large bowl.

Imagine the size of your ravioli, based on the width of the pasta sheet. Ideally, you’re working with 3-inch-wide pasta sheets. Lightly flour your countertop, to keep the pasta from sticking. Place half of the sheets on the floured countertop, and starting 1 1/2 inches down the sheet, place a tablespoon of filling every three inches.

Using a pastry brush, wet the pasta around the filling with a little water, and gently lay the extra pasta sheets on top of the filled sheets. Work your way down from one end to another, pushing down around the filling, so all air is pushed out, toward the edges. You should end up with a long sheet of pasta with bumps every 3 inches. Now use a knife or a pasta cutter to cut the sheet into squares, between each bump.

You can either throw them immediately into salted boiling water for one minute, and eat them, or freeze them using the directions above.

Stick ‘em in potstickers

Every year I plant so much more cabbage than anyone needs— napa and savoy and big heads of purple cabbage. Take all of that roughage, marry it to celery, carrots, scallions, a hot pepper or two and shred it all. Sauté it in sesame oil and a little soy sauce and you have the insides of a great dumpling.

Sure, you can add additional items, like protein—pork, chicken or shrimp. You can also add in other vegetables like broccoli, bamboo shoots or water chestnuts. For aromatics, spices, and seasoning, you can pull any flavoring from my favorite dumpling book: The Dim Sim Dumpling Book.

Grab pot sticker wrappers at your local Asian grocery (they’re better than the ones in the supermarket, but those are ok, too), place a teaspoon of filling in the center of each wrapper, and use a little water to wet a ring around the inside of the wrapper. Now crimp it. There are many ways to do this, but ultimately, you need to close the damn things.

Unlike your pasta, you’re going to cook these dumplings off before you freeze them. Start in a fry pan with a little bit of sesame oil on medium high heat. In a separate pot, have one cup of your favorite flavorful broth for every 15 dumplings, simmering and ready.

Once the oil shimmers, place the pot stickers flat side down in the fry pan, filling the fry pan up with 15 or so potstickers, but not allowing them to touch. Allow these to cook for one minute on medium-high, watching and checking for the bottoms to be brown and crispy, but not black. At that point, add the broth to the fry pan, cover the pan with a lid and standby. The stock will cook the dumplings, and steam off.

After 10 minutes or so, you’ll hear the pot stickers sizzling again as they meet the bottom of the pan and oil, after the stock has boiled off. Remove the lid, wait another minute, and carefully slide the pot stickers onto an oiled parchment-lined baking sheet. Now freeze them as you would the pasta, flat on the cookie sheet, before throwing them into a bag, removing the air, labeling them and putting them back into the freezer. To cook them later, throw them in the microwave, add them to some soup, or defrost and steam them until warm.

Bake them into hand pies

If you’ve had it with jam, but you’re left with piles of fruit from your garden, it’s time to think about the hand pie. Unlike a classic, circular pie—the kind you find on windowsills—you won’t need a fork to eat it. Hand pies almost beg you to eat them, and they’re the easiest to make. Sure, you could make some pie dough. But you could also not make some pie dough and give yourself a break by buying it.

Take your fruit, remove any pits, and if necessary, roughly chop it; big chunks are fine (think apples and peaches and plums). Now add the fruit and a tablespoon of water to a pan over a medium heat, and allow the fruit to cook down. You want a nice jammy consistency, which is going to require stirring over the heat for 20 minutes. Now taste. Is it sweet enough? If not, add sugar. If you like it the way it is, leave it alone; that is the beauty of the hand pie. Feel free to add any spices or flavorings you want, including a splash of vanilla or almond extract. If you’re stuck because this is not your kind of creativity, consult any pie recipe you like. I particularly enjoy Handheld Pies.

Roll out your dough. You’ll want to make a series of 8-inch by 8-inch squares. Place a tablespoon or two of your filling on one side of the dough square, then fold the dough over and seal it tight. I really can’t stress this enough, but don’t overfill it. How much is too much? Oh, you’ll know when you try to seal it up.

Now place the sealed pie(s) on a lined cookie sheet, give it a light stab with a fork, enough to pierce the top crust but not the bottom, and paint it with some egg wash and sprinkle on a little sugar. Bake it at 375℉ until the crust is golden brown, usually about 16 minutes.

Take the pies out, and allow them to cool, and place them in a freezer bag, with parchment paper between them, label them and throw them in the freezer. (If there are any left, because, c’mon. Hand pies.)

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