Half-Chinese dancer recreates family’s dumpling recipe, starts a venture

Chennai

Meiling started making dumplings and sent them to her friends and posted pictures on social media. Seeing one of the posts, one person asked her if she can take orders for homemade dumplings. Meiling didn’t know what to do and slowly, she started getting more orders.

The youngster thought of making it as a business model and started a venture called Mei Jiaozi. “My father is Chinese and my mother is Telugu. We love making dumplings at home because it was a family affair. Each person will be assigned a task — I was in charge of wrapping the dumplings because I am good at it. I wanted to master the family recipe and lockdown was the right time to do it. The dumpling recipe is being passed down from one generation to another. The Chinese words Mei means beautiful and Jiaozi means dumplings,” says Meiling, who is also a professional dancer.

Mei Jiaozi sells both non-veg and veg dumplings. One common question, she gets from people is that if she will be making the dumpling stuffing in Andhra style. “When people come to know that I also have Andhra roots, they ask if I can make the fillings in Andhra style. The recipe I am following now is created by my grandmother and it is authentic Chinese. I don’t want to make it as fusion food. People like it this way and I am happy sticking on to the family recipe,” she adds.

Meiling’s father’s family came to India during the Second World War. She was born and brought up in Chennai. “I am very much a Chennai girl. At home, we mostly make south Indian dishes. Apart from dumplings, I also make a spicy sauce — this sauce is everything and it tingles your tastebud. You can add it to Asian stir fry, noodles, etc. But I love to eat it with potato chips and murukku. Most of the sauces we get in Chennai have a sweet taste. That’s why I made a proper hot sauce.”

Meiling’s frozen dumplings also have a lot of takers. “One can store it in the freezer for a month and can eat it as a snack/meal or even make another dish out of it. It can be flavourful, satisfying and almost indistinguishable from the fresh ones, especially, if cooked properly,” she sums up.