In my own humble stab at Nouvelle Cuisine—which, translated into domestic cooking nomenclature, means “What’s in the Refrigerator”—I baked and mashed, then lightly fried, some fresh-baked local organically grown squash and put it into otherwise Asian-styled dumplings.
The dumpling wrappers cost under $2 at a Chinese market downtown.
The squash overwhelmed the other ingredients (fried onions and garlic, some grated carrot and potato, a teaspoon of soy sauce) as I’d expected, but not in a way that anybody minded. After some suspicions, the daughters dug in. Kathleen raved, and raved again when she had the last few dumplings in her lunch the next day. Such delicacies don’t often age well, but these did.
The trick might have been that I didn’t use any oils in the frying—just cooking spray. This led to a crispness that oils could not have accomplished. I think.
Honestly, this was a happy accident which I hope I can duplicate soon. Chinese-sesque Connecticut-grown squash dumplings. Wish I was this clever in the kitchen more often.