Ever since I was a child (and young mother to James but that is another story) we have made gyoza. We didn’t call them gyoza, we called them ears, I have no idea why and my brother Toby who introduced them denies calling them ears but I can’t work out why else they would have got this name, Even my bots now call them ears. Toby spent time in between term times at Leeds uni going to Hong Kong working with substance abusers and met and fell in love with one of the other volunteers. So they brought back the ‘Knowledge of the Ears’.
Making ears is a wonderful family occupation. We all (remember I am one of 6 kids and we all had friends and don’t do things by halves) would sit around the huge table my dad had constructed and we would create ears. You may know ears as pot stickers, Peking dumplings, dim sum but I am going to call them by their correct Ferguson name. Ears. Once the pastry was made, your choice, flour, touch of salt or oil if you want and enough water to make it pliable, then we would start rolling. The filling was minced pork, chopped spring onions, garlic, ginger, Chinese leaves, rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, touch of sesame oil. A lot of this can be added to or missed out, it really doesn’t matter too much, go wild and free.
The hard part was the pleating, they are like tiny Cornish pasties and if you are even slightly hoggy then the temptation was to stuff the damn thing but don’t do that! They will split and spill. My advice to you would be to go down to Newbury on Saturday and watch Chris at work. He is the ear King. He also makes it look easy, don’t be fooled. OR you could just buy his and eat them. I went with my lovely oldest son James and I think we ordered about 40!! While we waited for them to cook we tried out lots of different dishes and bought one of everything to take home (in fact we bought more than that as James and I both took some items home. The sauce Chris and Venus serve is a hot and addictive sauce which is a little different to the one that I make.
This is them!!! They are so wonderful and beautiful and tasty and delicious.
Chris making ear making look easy
   Green Thai curry with such an amazing depth of flavour!
The sign advertising the dish below
Again the flavours were intense but harmonic, cracking
This is Venus with two spectacularly gorgeous children, stunning lads who also happen to be my grandbots.
Two of the many regulars that this stall has, I cant believe I hadn’t been before but I absolutely know I will be a regular returner.   I haven’t even shown you the delicious Pad Kra Pao, so addictive, or many of the other dishes they cook according to season and fancy. Thanks James, your views were quite right. What amazing parents you must have.