Golden Dumplings

By: Marie Pascual

I’ve been having a really tough time connecting my passion for cooking while actually cooking lately.

After a series of weeks that I needed to take off due to mental health and family reasons, my trust from the crew was a little lost. I haven’t been as consistent with my skills and that really showed through.

So, in an effort to fix that, Chef put me on essentially six days in a row, with a 12 hour shift to end it off with: dumplings in the morning, and catering at night.

For the last few months I’ve been put on dumpling shift: working side by side with the owner to hand make short of 1000 dumplings for the week from start to finish.

Dumplings have been the key to elevator pitch civilians aboard on his ship. With a story containing exaggerated chapters of his grandmother making these golden little gems every morning and tales of the immigrant family struggle, how could you not try “gluten free vegan dumplings?” ( we were located on the west side, give us a break )

The days would start with showering my pants in rice flour and cornstarch from mise, followed by working with fresh hot dough using our raw hands, and rolling and cutting each wrapper piece by piece. We would then proceed to down as many perriers or cokes from the fridge, with a cigarette to mitigate the upcoming pain.

By 5 p.m. 780 dumplings or so would have been filled, crimped at least 10-12 times, and placed into a steamer to finish. I would then get into my car at 9 p.m. and yell in perfect silence.

Working service I’ve been assembling and reheating food like a Mcdonald’s worker. I haven’t worked on hotline yet. But it seemed like everyone wanted to test me. I felt out of place, out of focus. I haven’t worked consistently in a real restaurant in a while.

You know how in movies and other media, in order to show disassociation, the person’s body would just be hovering above them? That was me, for every single shift. I even convinced myself that I didn’t want to be a cook anymore.

I haphazardly got a sear on the dumplings I had bagged that morning for an order that came in during service. I was done. Until, one of the crew, Jin Robot said something that brought me back down:

“Remember to get a nice golden crust on those pleats. You want to show off all the hard work you’ve done.”

As someone who joined the crew only a few months back, Jin had already suffered his share of dumpling shifts. The hours always seemed to drone on, you worked with searing hot dough on your raw hands, and your entire would body ache without fail at the end of the day. He knew the work that had been put into these gluten free balls of gold, and wanted me to take pride in them.

And suddenly, I was back.