There are many variations of the pork filling I do, but here's the standard recipe for the filling.
Filling for Pork Shumai
14 oz ground pork
1/4C minced onion
1tsp juice from grated ginger
4 shiitake mushrooms, diced
1T potato starch
1T sake
1 egg
1/2tsp raw brown sugar
1/2T shio-koji (or 1/4tsp salt)
1/4tsp black pepper
1 tsp soy sauce
1/2T sesame oil
Mix the ingredients until smooth by hand. Cover and chill for 30 minutes.
With the above filling:
Pork Shumai 1 (with shumai wrappers)
25-30 wrappers are needed. Wrap the filling in the wrappers, and steam in the donabe for 6-8 minutes or until cooked through.
Pork Shumai 2 (with sweet rice)
Rinse 1/2 sweet rice (mochi rice) and soak in water for 2-3 hours. Drain. In a bowl, combine the drained sweet rice with 1T sake and 1/4tsp salt. Make the filling into 25-30 balls and roll each in the sweet rice so that it's covered with the rice. Steam for 10 minutes or until cooked through.
Both kinds of shumai can be served with soy sauce and vinegar dipping with a little karashi mustard.
We also made donabe rice...this time, we got special "Tsuya Hime" rice from Yamagata, Japan. It was a gift and just harvested last month. Cooking the premium rice in our double-lid donabe rice cooker, "Kamado-san", was such a luxury. And, the flavor was superb...waaah, I wish we could have Tsuya Hime rice all the time!
Can't stop donabe-steaming...so good.
Happy donabe life.
