Eo-mandu-beop (Fish Dumplings)

History

Eo-mandu — literally “fish dumplings” — are among the most refined members of the mandu family: instead of a flour-dough skin, thin slices of lean white fish (traditionally brown croaker and similar fish) are pounded flat and folded around a filling, dusted with starch, and gently poached. Because it demanded fine fish and careful handling, it is documented as part of Korean royal-court cuisine and a favorite of yangban households, later associated with elders’ summer birthday tables and Buddha’s Birthday, and elsewhere with the Dano festival. Jang Gye-hyang’s Eumsik dimibang, the handwritten Korean-language cookbook compiled around 1670, is an early written witness to the method: her version slices the fish very thin, mixes a stuffing of seogi, pyogo and songi mushrooms with pheasant and white pine nuts fried in soy and oil, dusts each parcel in mung-bean starch, and boils it like a dumpling. The seasoning marks its age — soy, mushrooms, pheasant and pine nuts, with no chili, which had not yet reached the region.

Ingredients

• fish (or meat)
• seogi, pyogo, songi mushrooms
• pheasant
• pine nuts
• soy sauce and sesame oil
• mung-bean starch

Instructions

1. Slice fish very thin to use as the wrapper.
2. Mince seogi/pyogo/songi mushrooms, pheasant and pine nuts together; fry in soy sauce and oil.
3. Enclose the filling in the fish slice and seal with mung-bean starch.
4. Dust lightly with more mung-bean starch and boil like mandu.