Simonds is the life of this video party
SALEM -- For the latest episode of her new video blog, cookbook author Nina Simonds is bouncing around her kitchen throwing together what she calls the "best dumplings ever." She's funny and charmingly scatterbrained, with red ballet slippers on her feet, eye glasses perched on her head, and a voice hoarse from talking and talking and talking.
Also in the kitchen is Julie Lutts, her tall blonde recipe tester; Ingrid Schwamb, her personal assistant; Maureen Yasi, a shorter blondish recipe tester; and Steve Garfield, the quirky Jamaica Plain-based video blog pioneer who tapes the show. Everyone is laughing, cooking, getting bossed around, and mugging for the camera. It's like they're not really doing anything serious here, which is why Simonds's vlog, spicesoflife.com, is becoming a hit.
The site launched in February with a post from Chinatown about the best food for the Chinese New Year (Simonds, 54, went to Asia for the first time when she was 19). Since then she has taken the show to her acupuncturist, a roadside diner in North Carolina, and the apartment of a busy young couple who have no dishwasher. Simonds says that the blog, sponsored by Legal Sea Foods, is meant to be about food and health and lifestyle and pleasure. "Video is the perfect medium to show how much pleasure there can be in eating healthy food," she says.
The filming style is frantic and unfussy. Garfield uses a monopod mounted
Simonds is the author of nine books on Chinese cuisine and culture including "Asian Noodles" and "A Spoonful of Ginger." She is a frequent contributor to O, The Oprah Magazine and The
She loves to have friends over to make dumplings. "If you invite people over they'll do all the work," she says, "and you'll get to eat dumplings." Then she lets out a husky laugh.
Today's pot stickers start with Napa cabbage, which Simonds salts to remove moisture and then wrings out with her hands and chops. She tosses the cabbage in a big bowl with lean ground pork -- "freshly ground from the shoulder or rump is best" -- green garlic chives, to make the filling fragrant, chopped garlic, ginger, toasted sesame oil, and sake. She likes super thin wrappers made in Chinatown. "If you think I slave over my own skins you're crazy," she says.
Garfield tapes and the ladies stand around the table spooning filling into the skins and crimping the edges closed. The finished dumplings go on a cornstarch-dusted sheet pan. While the team works, they stretch -- they roll their necks and shrug their shoulders and giggle. At one point, the head cook and her assistants form a massage train.
Simonds offers cooking advice to the camera like "Cooking can be a meditation. Stretch and breathe, taste as you cook." Or this: "The best way to store ginger is in a pot of sand." She urges the other women to concentrate on being mindful and putting good vibrations into the food. "You can't say anything bad when you're making dumplings," she says. "You'll have bad luck if you do. So no gossip girls!"
To cook the dumplings, Simonds heats a nonstick pan over high heat on her burly commercial range. When it's hot, she pours in olive oil and carefully arranges the dumplings. The oil pops and the dumplings stick to the pot like they're supposed to. Simonds pours a glass of water into the pan and throws on a lid so they can steam.
The pot stickers are ready when the skins are translucent. Simonds inverts the pan onto a plate. The dumplings are really beautiful, golden and puffy and delicate. She serves them with two dipping sauces. Chinese black vinegar with soy and ginger is one; the other is soy sauce mixed with garlic. "Bring out the hot sauce," says the cook, "you can't forget the hot sauce."
Simonds breaks out the Coronas and everyone sits down at the table, using chopsticks to pull pot stickers off the serving plate. "They're glowing," says one of the recipe testers.
"It's because they are packed with so much good will, because they were made with love," says Simonds.
On her next post, Simonds will cook frozen dumplings from a Chinese market and Trader Joe's. "These are both so good you would never know they weren't homemade," she says. "I even taught my son, and now he makes them to impress girls."
To see Nina Simonds's vlog, go to spicesoflife.com. 