These ultra-crisp Gorgongyoza (gorgonzola potstickers), are filled with pork, garlic chives, cauliflower and creamy gorgonzola. Served with a balsamic soy sauce, they're irresistibly good!

Whether you’re talking about work, play or food, variety is indeed the spice of life, and for me, it’s what keeps me looking forward to the next day or my next meal. At our table, dinner is usually a genre-bending mishmash of random experiments for work, along with a few vegetable dishes, and perhaps an indulgence or two, such as a plate of sashimi or a platter of cheese. While the food on the table rarely matches, it’s never dull, and the disparate flavors occasionally lead to unexpected pairings that evolve into a new dish.

The other day I had a plateful of garlicky pan-fried gyoza on the table, which sat next to a plate of ripe, creamy gorgonzola. At some point in the meal, I still had a piece of pungent gorgonzola melting on my tongue when I took a bite of a crisp potsticker. The rich, salty cheese enveloped and tamed the intensely green garlic of the chives while synergizing with the savory porcine juices flowing from the dumpling as it burst open.

Gorgonzola cheese works beautifully in potstickers.

Inspired by dinner that night, I came up with these Gorgongyoza substituting cauliflower in place of the usual cabbage and adding gorgonzola to the filling, which not only provides a huge flavor boost, it also makes the mixture more tender and juicy. The amalgam of melted cheese, umami-rich pork juices, pungent chives and nutty sesame oil is indescribably good.

I served this with a dipping sauce made with a 1:1 ratio of 15 year aged balsamic to soy sauce, which creates a marvelously complex array of fruity, caramel notes with a pleasant balance of sweet, salty savory and sour tastes. The sauce paired beautifully with the Gorgongyoza, but I love condiments, and I also brought out some ume(Japanese apricot) jam, as well as with honey, which were both splendid.

The ingredients for my gorgonzola potstickers include pork, cauliflower, garlic chives and of course gorgonzola cheese.

By nature, these dumplings are pretty Asian, but they could easily be turned into delightful ravioli by sandwiching the filling between two potsticker wrappers and then boiling them, before serving with a tomato sauce.

One last thing I wanted to touch on is the water/starch mixture I use to fry the gyoza. This is what gives the gyoza their ultra-crisp “wings” and what makes them all stick together. If you don’t want them to stick together, use plain water (without the starch) to steam the gyoza. While they won’t end up quite as crisp, they’ll still be good and they won’t all stick together.

These super crispy gorgonzola gyoza (potstickers) are filled with savory pork, cauliflower, pungent garlic chives and rich, creamy gorgonzola cheese.

Experimental