A Chinese colleague of mine -- Ling, since moved to Boston I think -- taught me to make won tons. It's the kind of meal that is therapeutic in its preparation, because you can spend about an hour folding these little dumplings. Mira, who is six, just loves helping in the kitchen, so she climbs up on a stool and helps with all the steps of preparation except for the chopping-things-with-a-big knife.

Random idea: Since people keep suggesting KRecipes as an outlet for these cookery entries -- and folk should be pestering Ariya about it as well -- perhaps someone would like to announce that they will maintain a KDE-contributors-cookbook? Collect recipes from as many KDE contributors as you can, covert to KRecipes (it doesn't run at all on my Kubuntu box) and publish somewhere.

Faux won tons, Dutch style: makes 75 dumplings, which will be enough for a family of four if you add some more steamed veggies. Get 75 won ton skins -- these are sold in packs of about 50 at eastern stores all over the Netherlands, not sure how to get them elsewhere. For the filling, two chicken breasts (about 400g), four large carrots, three cloves of garlic, a tsp. of laos (is that galanga?) and a tbsp. of soy sauce (the thin salty kind; I'm partial to Pearl River Bridge brand). Chop chicken very fine, grate carrots, dice garlic. Mix together and knead until carrots and garlic are eveny spread out. Drop tsp. sized balls on to middle of won ton skin, then fold: wet two adjacent edges, fold corner across, seal edges; if you leave it like that, you can pan fry them; otherwise fold the other two corners to the middle corner again and make sure it's well sealed. Won tons can be boiled - about five minutes - and served with soy sauce and koriander dip.

Yes, it's probably offensive to 1 billion food purists, but I like it this way. Amiel said "eww, that looks funny" and Mira only eats the skins, and still it's a good recipe.