by bintangkecil on Saturday, October 24th, 2009 | Entertainment, News | No Comments

First of all, for those who don’t know what a dumpling is. Here’s an explanation of it from wikipedia:

Dumplings are cooked balls of dough. They are based on flour, potatoes, bread or matzoh meal, and may include meat, fish, or sweets. They may be cooked by boiling, steaming, simmering, frying, or baking. Ingredients may be as a part of a filling, or mixed throughout the dumpling. Dumplings may be sweet, spicy or savoury. They may be eaten alone, in soup, with gravy, or in many other presentations.

The 2009 Dumpling Festival is going down this Saturday from 12 to 5 p.m. at Sarah D. Rooselvelt Park on E. Houston and Bowery, New York. This is the 6th Annual Chef One Dumpling Eating Contest which will be presented by Chef One. The event will be emceed by Jaden Hair, top Asian food blogger and author of The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook: 101 Asian Recipes Simple Enough for Tonight’s Dinner. All proceeds from the event will benefit the Food Bank For New York City.

Competitive eaters “Fabulous” Floria Lee and “Gentleman” Joe Menchetti were last year’s winners eating 38 and 66 dumplings respectively. Both reigning champions are expected to re-enter the contest this year to defend their titles. Chef One’s newest product Tang’s Natural Whole Wheat Chicken & Vegetable Dumplings featuring Bell & Evans chicken will be used in this year’s contest.

One participant from last year’s dumpling eating contest said that he consumed 30 dumplings before realizing he could actually get hurt. Is he ready for this year? “Oh, yeah. I’ve been training all year.” And for good reason: The first place prize is $1,000. If Cool Hand Luke can eat 50 eggs you can put down some pierogi (which is very much a dumpling).

“Our annual dumpling eating contest has been so well-received by attendees we
decided to expand the event into an entire festival dedicated to the
dumpling,” said Terry Tang, CEO of Chef One Corp. “This year marks our 10th
anniversary manufacturing dumplings in NYC and we are thrilled to bring this
first-of-its-kind event to our local community. Giving back to the community
is one of our corporate missions and we are honored to work with one of the
most important hunger-relief organizations to help fight hunger in New York
City.”

In addition to the dumpling eating contest, the event will include cookbook signings with Chefs Wai Hon Chu, co-author of The Dumpling: A Seasonal Guide; and Jaden Hair, author of The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook: 101 Asian Recipes Simple Enough for Tonight’s Dinner; an East Village Dumpling Tour and Dumpling Class by Wai Hon Chu; and family fun games. Guests and attendees will also be able to taste and experience dumplings from around the world with offerings such as gnocchi (Italy), tamale (Mexico), palitaw (Philippines), kuih koci (Malaysia), idli (India), bao (China), and pierogi (Poland).

Reading all of these makes me hungry!

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