Mongolia or bust

April 19, 2014:  When Rory said Mongolia, I immediately thought, ooohhh, wouldn't it be nice not to have to cook and to go to The Mongolian Grill instead?  I really wanted to do this, but then I thought, I bet The Mongolian Grill is nothing like real Mongolian food.  Did a little research and confirmed my suspicions :(  Neither is Mongolian BBQ apparently.  So, I set out to find a true Mongolian dish.  The one I picked was called Buuz, a steamed dumpling found throughout Mongolia and consumed regularly, but especially on their New Year's.  The dumpling outside, which is made from a basic flour and water mixture, is traditionally folded in various, but specific ways.  My folding method turned out to be however I could manage to get the sticky dough to stay together!  I had my doubts these were going to turn out and was running a list through my head of alternate, quick dinners we could have should they end up a disaster!  I used my double boiler to do the steaming.  I also used ground beef in place of mutton.  Per About.com:  "Older sheep is called mutton and has a much stronger flavor and tougher meat that many find distasteful."  I just couldn't do mutton and honestly can't do lamb anyway.  Ok, I admit it, I was a picky kid.  I have grown up a lot in my willingness to try things, but so far, lamb is not one.  So, lean ground beef it was!  Well, despite my fears as I loaded the double boiler, our buuz turned out quite well!  In fact, Rory finished his off long before the rest of us!  We served them with ketchup to dip (per recipe suggestion).  Rory loved them!  Gavin finally ate his when I allowed him to take the meat out of the dumpling.  He also tried one bite of the dumpling, but that was all I could get!  Well, at least he tried it.  My husband enjoyed them, as well.  My pound of ground beef doubled the recipe, so I froze what I didn't cook and am hoping I can steam them later??  We'll see.  We looked at images of Mongolia on Google.  It is very barren looking, desert like in most of the pictures we saw, but with snow peaked mountains.  Per Wikipedia, it is hot in the summer and very cold in the winter.  I was surprised to see there are large, metropolitan cities like Ulaanbataar, their capital.  30% are still nomadic or semi-nomadic, however, most living on less than a $1.25/day.  The latter is how I pictured Mongolia.  However, the larger of the population do live in the capital.  Definitely interesting to learn more about the world!  Well, I was pleasantly surprised at our yummy buuz and would definitely try them again.  They are very similar to the Chinese pot stickers, in fact, they are probably about the same.  Here is the recipe I used and a look at how they turned out:

http://www.mongolfood.info/en/recipes/buuz.html