bento friday: I made gyoza!

 Gyoza (also known as potstickers for very relevant reasons) are delicious.  At their most basic, they're Japanese dumplings of folded pasta filled with, um, stuff.  I had a half-pack of wonton pasta sheets languishing in the freezer and threatening to get freezer burned, so I decided to give it a whirl for a weeknight dinner.

And my goodness, but they're delicious.

mmmmm... gyoza.....

I simply minced up whatever stuff I had around (ginger, garlic, mushrooms, um, random leftover broccoli stems I think, bean sprouts), sautéed it, filled the little wrappers and pretended to know what I was doing about the folding.  Then one fry-steaming session later, voila!  

They were a bit bland (need to add more flavory stuff next time) and a little lumpy and unwieldy.  Apparently chopping the stuff smaller would be a good idea.  But!  Still delicious, and way less intimidating than I'd thought they'd be.  

The picture is from their second round, as leftover bento lunches.  Served with cold sesame noodles topped with more bean sprouts. 

sesame noodles

The cold sesame noodles are loosely based on Pioneer Woman's recipe, and are always remarkably delicious.  I tend to use udon noodles instead of spaghetti, but hey, in her words, whatever makes your skirt fly up.