Somewhere South

[chiming jingle] [paper rustling] [clip chinking] [spoon scrapping] [gentle guitar beat] - My mom used to make big pots of greens.

I think greens and potlikker are one of her all-time favorite things.

And when she wanted to make those greens our whole meal, she would make these cornmeal dumplings.

And drop them into the potlikker to boil.

All right mom, you wanna help me make these dumplings?

- Oh yes.

- Or just tell me what I'm doing wrong.

- Oh, okay.

They are looking good.

- They do look good.

And when I think of dumplings, I always think about those cornmeal dumplings bobbing in a bowl of collards.

Can't believe I've never actually made these before.

Just all from my memory.

[Scarlett laughs] [country music] I'm Vivian, and I'm a chef.

The food I cook tells a story of Southern food as I know it.

But that story is more complex then I thought.

I don't where I'm going But I'm on my way Lord if you love me Keep me I pray - So I set out to find the dishes that bind and define us.

Along the way, I saw that when we eat together, we share more than a meal.

The American South is my classroom.

And the dishes we share will be my roadmap.

[engine rumbling] [palm tapping] All right Ashleigh, you're gonna take the water and the butter and a teaspoon of salt, and bring it up to a simmer.

And then once it's simmering, add all the flour.

And we're gonna cook the flour.

- So I'm looking for it to dry out just a bit?

- Exactly.

[gentle music] Ashleigh and I are prepping for charity dinner called East Meets West.

The idea for the dinner was that Korean American chefs would cook Southern food, while Southern chefs attempted Korean food.

Of course everybody wimped out and decided to cook in their wheelhouse.

But I'm gonna use this opportunity to hone my gnocchi skills with a new restaurant project in mind.

So we are opening another restaurant.

It's gonna be called Benny's Big Time Pizzeria.

And aside from the menu being like our riff on Italian American, we don't really know much else about what we're doing.

We've hired a chef, so now Jim and I are kinda developing the menu.

And I'm having some struggles.

Because a lot of the menu that he's proposed to me is too... - Unapproachable maybe?

- Yeah, not approachable.

Okay, Salt cod mezzaluna, porchetta di testa, which is a pig's head that's poached and rolled up in sous vide.

- To be fancy.

[laughing] And then sliced.

So put the sweet potato, Dijon and the cheese in here.

We'll paddle this for a few minutes and then we'll add the eggs one at a time.

- Five to six eggs?

- Um hm.

We're making gnocchi for a dinner that we're getting ready to do.

And gnocchi is a dumpling that most people associate with Italy, but this is a French style gnocchi.

And it's made with a pate a choux dough.

All of these words are not my specialty.

Now we're gonna incorporate sweet potatoes.

All right we need to make that turnip green pesto.

And then we can just pack a cooler and we'll take it tomorrow.

- Okay, sounds good.

[plastic rasping] [gentle guitar beat] - We throw this word "dumpling" around, and assign it's name to all kinds of things.

Pierogis, ravioli, shumai and potstickers are all small packages of dough, stuffed with things like minced meat, cheese and vegetables.

They're steamed, boiled or fried.

Matzo balls and gnocchi are called dumplings too.

They're dough shaped into mass without a filling.

They get boiled and tossed into broth or sauce.

Are all of these truly dumplings?

I don't know.

[gentle music] The dinner's at my friend Joe Kwon's house.

Joe is a food obsessed musician, who's brought together a group of chefs I think are rock stars in their own right.

Ed Lee is both restauranteur and historian.

And Michel Lee, no relation, owns four of my favorite restaurants in Durham.

- How you doing?

- How you doing?

- I'm good, I'm good.

What are you making?

- I'm making rabbit dumplings.

Why don't you help me make them?

- I'd love that, I'd love that.

- By the way, I've had a dream of mine, since I was 21, to open a dumpling restaurant, and the name of it is, Take a Dumpling.

[Vivian laughs] - So you got rabbit?

- Rabbit, pork, little bit of spring onions, cabbage and then basically spices.

- Okay so I'm gonna try.

- Okay, you ready?

We'll make 300 of these, all exactly the same size.

And then so what I'll do is I'll come across the top here and I'll pinch.

Now the really important part about this is when you're folding, start from the bottom and push the air up, 'cause what you don't want is an air pocket.

- I see where I went wrong.

- Yeah, but you can fix that, so I just do that.

And then you can just come here and just pinch them together.

- Oh okay.

- And then what I'll do is I'll take my scissor and I just cut, so that they kind of meet in the middle.

It's almost like a little pyramid.

- So you're Korean.

- Yes I am.

- But you grew up in New York.

- Yeah, and this is part of my whole thing about whether it's food or cultural identity.

It's like I don't know what it means to be Korean in America, I grew up in Brooklyn.

- So what makes this a dumpling?

- It's funny because obviously dumplings in the South are just a totally different thing.

- Right.

- I remember the first time I was at a restaurant in Louisville, and I was like oh they have chicken and dumplings.

[laughs] This is not a dumpling.

- What would you call it?

- Boiled dough.

- But you would call gnocchi a dumpling, wouldn't you?

- I guess.

I think ultimately a dumpling is whatever fits in your mouth.

And like small little packet.

- Small.

- And so what's the root of the Southern dumpling?

- I think it's a way to stretch the chicken, and that's certainly the premise behind gnocchi.

But this doesn't feel the same.

- No and actually so this comes from a traditional, the royal court.

This is not a peasant food.

Which is why the Southern dumpling-- - Doesn't fit.

- Really doesn't fit the model.

- 'Cause this is complicated.

[laughs] [gentle guitar music] - Whoa.

[pan bubbling] Good, so I'm doing dumplings that are a Parisian gnocchi.

Just gonna let them boil till the eggs are cooked through.

And I'm gonna put them in an ice bath.

And then you pan fry them.

So they'll get crispy around the edges, and be really super light and soft on the inside.

[gentle guitar music] - Rocking now.

So I have a little soya sauce vinegar, I basically deglazed the bed.

- Oh really?

- What happens is that the skin all absorbs that.

So when you send it out, you don't have to dip it.

It's already in there, so you can just eat it.

- Oh that's brilliant.

All right, so Ashleigh, you wanna divide these among our plates here?

And then you can put a little sausage on top.

So I use turnips, turnip greens, chervil, mint, pistachio, olive oil, and that's done, run that.

[conversations buzzing] [gentle guitar music] I think Ed's got some of his facts straight when it comes to what is and what is not a dumpling.

We both agree that there's dough involved.

And that dumplings are often stuffed.

But I disagree with his statement that Southern style dumplings are an outlier.

Basically, our conversation leaves me with more questions.

[beeping] [clapping] - What are we talking about?

- You don't get to prepare.

- I don't know, I kinda black out when I'm talking sometimes, and I just go with it.

[chiming music] - A dumpling is a little pocket of love.

- Pastry filled with some goodness and it's-- - A kind of potent, and very rich, small bite.

- Explosions of flavor as soon as you bite into it.

- Tiny, delicious little, I'm gonna say hot pockets, but I'm not gonna say hot pockets.

- A filling wrapped in a dough.

- And it's got a protein, well, or a vegetable inside.

- And it can be pork or chicken.

- Some sort of seafood.

- Pan fried, deep fried, or steamed.

- It's like a pierogi, I feel like that's like a dumpling.

I see where this is going now.

- Dumpling is a little bit different for me, growing up in the South, because it's part of like a chicken and dumpling, or chicken and pastry.

- Kinda slick on the outside, bready in the middle.

- Some dumplings a while to make.

And it takes a lotta nurture and care and tenderness.

And to me that's what makes it good.

[blues jazz rock music] - My dumpling investigation begins in Clarksdale, Mississippi, deep in the Delta.

Clarksdale is a place that calls to mind the Mississippi River, vast cotton fields, and without a doubt, the blues.

[blues jazz rock music] Clarksdale is a small town with only about 15,000 people.

But it was pivotal in the fight for racial equality in the South.

This complicated region isn't just black and white though.

I'm here because of a lesser known Delta story.

That of the Mississippi Chinese.

And to taste their dumplings.

[church organ music] Chinese immigrants started moving to the Mississippi Delta in the 1800's, in relatively large numbers.

They came to work the cotton fields, but found their niche as merchants who owned and operated grocery stores.

Over the past 200 years, this community has evolved and become part of the fabric of the Delta.

They're Chinese, and they're Southern.

And today I meet tight knit group of friends and families with a shared history.

It's a dumpling feast at the Chow house.

So we are here at Sally Chow's house.

And Carol Chinn her friend is gonna make some dumplings, right?

- That's right.

- And where are we in the world?

- We're in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

Well you see how small Clarksdale is, at the height maybe 18,000.

There were 25 Chinese grocery stores here.

- So you grew up in a grocery store, and you grew up in a grocery store.

- Yeah, that's why we say, grocery stories, because everybody just came from the grocery store.

- So you're gonna make, what kind of dumpling?

- These are going to be pork, shrimp and mushroom with water chestnuts and green onions.

I have a recipe after she passed away.

I thought, well what better tribute for my mother.

[gentle music] This is wheat starch, throw that in there, one cup.

And this is tapioca starch.

And that's about a one to two ratio.

So usually it's about a cup.

- And that water's boiling?

- Boiling.

[chuckles] This is how she would do it.

And then she would use her hands.

- After it cools down?

- No.

- No?

Very few people make dumplings at home.

Why do you think that is, particularly here?

- Just watching Carol here.

[Carol laughs] - I see it right now, why am I asking questions I know the answer to?

Why would you stick your hand in bowl of boiling water.

- 'Cause I'm crazy.

Dig in.

So we form a little ball here.

Do your pleats.

- Right, these pleats.

- So then you put a bit of the filling in.

You start off, and then I put my two fingers right here to get the shape.

- What do you think?

That's not exactly right.

- All right, good.

[laughs] - So do you consider yourself Chinese, or Southern?

- Probably Chinese first.

The foods that I cooked for my children, I cooked Chinese food.

And they would say, why do you cook so much Chinese food?

Can you not cook American food?

And said okay, I cooked a pot roast for them.

And they looked at it and go, what is this mom?

- Go back to your dumplings.

[laughing] - I said, you wanted American food, this is the best I can do.

My mother cooked Chinese food all the time.

- Wow, so what about you?

- It's Southern Chinese American.

- That's right.

[laughing] All right, so what is that?

- This is a steamer that my dad prepared for my mother.

- Improvising.

- This was a cake pan that he just took an ice pick and poked holes in it.

- Wow.

- Okay, so those will go for six minutes.

- Six minutes is long enough because the filling is cooked through.

- Right, and then it will produce a translucent wrapping to it.

- Oh wow, look they're translucent.

- I think it's so pretty.

- Tell me about the red dot?

- My mother put a red dot on all her dumplings because it was good luck.

- Oh wow, I've never seen that before.

- It's tradition.

- It's tradition.

- Chinese kitchen.

- Can we try?

- Sure.

- How would you define what a dumpling is?

- A dumpling is usually made from flour.

- Sometimes they're filled, sometimes they're not.

Sometimes they're rustic, sometimes they're fancy.

Well these are beautiful, thank you.

- Thank you.

- Are we gonna have some more dim sum?

- We're gonna get to sample several varieties of dumplings today.

And so the guys are out back, steaming and doing a little bit of frying too.

[gentle music] [pan sizzling] - Once it starts smoking like that, you know you're ready.

- Mm, I love this, so they little baby bok choy?

- That's the baby bok choy.

- So why a wok?

- We like to cook on a wok, because you get the intense heat.

There's an old term, wok hei, the breath of the wok.

Somebody that doesn't have confidence in their cooking, they can cook on a really low flame, and they won't get wok hei.

- Right.

[laughs] - Smell it now?

- It smells awesome.

China is the birthplace of the dumpling.

And argue that dumplings are so integral to that country's deep and vast cuisine, they're more like a food group, then a single dish.

Made by hand, stuffed, steamed and fried.

There are more than 3,000 varieties of dumplings in China.

- Father in heaven, I just thank you for this day.

I thank you entirely that we can gather-- - The Chinese meal made of dumplings is an event.

One made for sharing, for conversation and for sitting around the table.

- In Jesus name, amen.

- Amen.

- This is a lot of dumplings.

- We couldn't get them all on the table.

[laughing] [gentle music] - My favorite would be ham sui gok.

It's fried with sweet potato flour.

And inside is a little it's a little salty and has pork, shrimp and mushrooms.

- But this one's har gow.

- These are wu gok, they are made of taro root, pork and shrimp on the inside.

- I like the char sui bao.

- Yeah, roast pork stuffing.

This is shrimp and chives here.

- And these are soupy buns, because on the inside there's just a little bit of ground pork and then it also has a little bit of broth in the middle.

- I think they all meet the definition of a dumpling, 'cause they're all wrapped in different kinds of flour.

And I'll start right here.

- Well thank you all so much for taking me down this walk down dumpling lane.

I appreciate your Southern hospitality.

- Okay Vivian, you need to come visit the museum.

- What's at the museum?

- The project that we have been working on the last 10 years, telling the story of the Mississippi Chinese.

- All right I'll do that, I'd love to do that.

Over the last decade, Frieda Quon has spearheaded an effort to bring her community's memories to life, at the Delta Chinese Heritage Museum.

In 1940 around 750 Chinese residents lived in the Mississippi Delta.

By the 1970s, that number grew to as many as 3,000.

Today there are just a handful of Chinese families dotting the Delta landscape, and even fewer who remember their heyday.

- We will start over at the beginning.

The early immigrants who first came, came by way of ship.

- It's after the war, the slaves were freed, and so they needed workers for the fields.

And they found out that they could get immigrant Chinese.

- The Chinese then realized, maybe working in the fields would not be their best job, and so they opened family grocery stores.

This is the Chinese school in Greenville.

Chinese children were not allowed to attend the white school.

So they started from a one room school.

[cheerful chiming music] - And both of you grew up in grocery stores.

- Lived behind the grocer, in fact this is my family's dining room table.

[laughs] - The actual table.

- The table.

- We were in the store working and then we lived in the back of the store.

In fact that is a picture of our family.

We didn't exactly have furniture.

We sat on these apple crates.

- Really.

- Because we were little and our feet would dangle.

He would give us a footrest.

- So where are you in this picture?

- Right there in the back.

- Right there?

- Yes.

- Looking at the camera.

When you read about Chinese grocers in the Delta, the understanding is that you all served the African American community.

- Correct, the majority of my father's customers were African American.

- That's the neighborhood grocery store?

- That was a symbionic relationship, and you helped them, I think we helped each other.

- Visitors come, and they want to see the store that your parents had, well they aren't here anymore.

Those stores have become convenience stores, we'll just call them.

- And since they've closed up, it's become a food desert.

- Well the museum is certainly a nod to the Chinese grocery stores of the Delta past.

Store fronts, part of a once thriving economy are now skeletons of themselves.

Gene's Market, one of the few stores still open, is a somber reminder of a more vibrant history.

But today, potato chips stock the produce bin.

Candy claims the center isles.

And the meat counter is home to Gene's tennis gear.

- Hi, I'm in the Vienna sausage isle.

[guitar strums] Hi.

- I'm Gene.

- I'm Vivian, very nice to meet you.

Oh my god, is this a Kool-Aid pickle?

- Kool-Aid pickles, yes.

- I feel like I need to try one.

What is it?

- It's a pickle that's been sliced in half, marinated in Kool-Aid.

A Southern thing, for sure.

- This smells like Kool-Aid.

- That's right.

- And pickle.

- Not surprisingly.

[Vivian laughs] - Whoa.

[Gene laughs] Do people buy those?

- Yes, uh huh, very popular.

- And your mom, I saw her peeking out of-- - Yeah, mom.

- She looked surprised to see us?

- Yes, she was very surprised.

[laughs] - Does she work in the store with you?

- Yes, as a matter of fact mom is here pretty much all the time.

Mom and dad used to open six o'clock in the morning till midnight, so we close at seven now.

Mom calls that part-time hours.

[laughs] - You got a lotta stuff in here.

You've got your toy isle, and the Vienna sausage, I've never seen such a selection, Fried Pickles with Ranch, that's a lot to pack into one bag.

Chili Le Monde.

- Le Monde if you're French.

- Le Monde.

[Gene laughs] - The last time I counted, there are about 82 different varieties.

- 82?

- Our slogan is, You Want It, We Got It.

We Don't Got It, We Get It, We Can't Get It, You Don't Need It.

[laughing] - It's really good.

Will you walk me round the store?

- Sure.

[gentle music] - So where did your family come from and when did they get here?

- They came from near Canton, China in 1948.

They were forced to leave for, shall we say political reasons.

This is the original utility bill.

Grandpa opened the store, September the 3rd, 1952.

- It was five dollars?

- It was for five dollars and grandpa probably thought that was outrageous.

- Did you all live around here?

- Actually the parking lot used to be the living quarters.

- And then over here, this is the Chinese section?

- Well pretty much the Chinese section for us.

- Tofu of some kind?

- I think it's fermented Tofu.

- All this stuff's gotta be fermented, 'cause it's probably been on the shelf for a while.

- In the old days there wasn't any refrigeration so that's how they preserved things.

- We've been talking about dumplings a lot.

The fact that people only wanna buy stuff that is really quick.

Fast food, food in a can, and dumplings are the antithesis of that.

- Complete opposite.

- If you're gonna make it, it's gonna take you a lotta time.

- Yes, people don't realize how much time it takes.

- All right, I'm ready to check out.

- All right.

- Fermented bean curd and Vienna sausages.

Why do you think you're one of two Chinese grocers left in Clarksdale?

- The tradition of the old days was for the older generation to make enough money in the stores to send the kids to college.

And the kids, they went to college, well they wanted other employment opportunities besides the store.

That's pretty much the end of that tradition.

- Thanks for this.

Thank you so much Gene.

- Thank you.

- It is a pleasure to meet you.

[rapid tempo chiming music] With the decline of the region's economy and the pull of educational and professional opportunities for the next generation.

Chinese families have left the Delta for bigger cities and growing communities.

One town experiencing a bit of resurgence is Greenwood, Mississippi.

The Mai family, and the restaurant, Mai Little China, epitomize the cultural crossroads that meet in the Delta.

Here, you'll find Southern fried catfish and turnip greens, sharing a buffet with dumplings and sweet 'n sour chicken.

- Hey I'm Vivian.

- How are you, I'm Cathy.

- Nice to meet you.

- Hey, I'm Matthew.

- Hey Matthew, whoa oh.

[laughs] You got a firm grip.

- Yeah I have.

- You're from China.

- Yes ma'am, from China.

- But you probably didn't learn how to make those smothered pork chops there.

- It was right here.

Greenwood, Mississippi.

[laughing] Are we gonna make some dumplings?

- Yes.

He's gonna do the pork and chive.

So here's the chives, they're from my mother-in-law's garden.

- Are these dumplings on the menu at night?

- For family.

- And for me.

- Yeah and for you.

This is ground pork?

- Yes ma'am.

- Whoa, that's your cleaver.

Cathy, where did you grow up?

- I grew up here.

I was born in Greenwood.

- So how did you and Cathy meet?

Your mother, and your grandmother hooked y'all up.

From Boston to China?

[laughing] I like the way this happened.

[cleaver banging] I bet that was hard, I bet you wanted to beat your head against the wall.

- Yeah, the first couple years, whoo.

[gentle music] [metal scrapping] [pan sizzling] [bowl clinking] - Now the soy sauce.

- Soy sauce.

- Water chestnut.

- And that'll give it crunch.

I didn't realize that it had egg in it.

- A little white pepper.

- White pepper?

Is white pepper used a lot in Cantonese food?

- Yes ma'am.

- And then there's chives.

- For the restaurant, we make like that.

- And these are your wrappers.

Oh, you put a whole shrimp in there.

- For the restaurant, we make like that.

Have to steam, then you pan fry.

- Do you steam it first, and then pan fry it?

- Yeah.

[pan sizzling] - My mother would make dumplings, 'cause you never visit anyone empty handed.

So she would always make some kind of dumpling to take.

- A gift almost.

- It is a gift in a lotta ways.

- See I would take a bottle of wine.

- That's what I would do too, it's just easy.

So I'm gonna make mom's dumpling recipe.

- Glutenous rice flour, [packet crinkling] tapioca.

So it has brown sugar in it?

- It's Chinese brown sugar, it comes in slabs.

- So you took this sugar, put it with water and boiled it?

- This sugar is also medicinal for my mom.

If you have allergies or if you have a rash or itchiness, you can-- - So you rub this on your itchy part or do you eat it?

[Cathy laughs] Okay so you've got tapioca.

- And then you just work it in.

- Looks like a very tender dough right now.

- It is tender.

You just pinch off a piece, and it's very pliable.

Once you make your ball, you just put it in there, mash it down a bit, coat it on that side, see?

Here's our filling.

- What's in there?

- Coconut and sesame seeds, roasted peanuts and sugar.

And then you fold it in half like that.

[gentle music] [laughing] - Ah ha, it's coming up, I was getting worried.

Oh those are beautiful.

Okay, so we've got your pork, shrimp, water chestnut and chive.

[dumpling crunching] They're great, and I like the whole shrimp in there.

It does make it lighter and changes the texture.

And then these.

I love that, I like that it's not too sweet.

I like the filling.

It's like there was sugar in it, and it melted.

And the peanut is really nice in there.

Thank you, give me a hug.

Thank you Cathy.

- Thank you.

- My favorite kind of dumpling.

[beeping] I really like the, well mm.

Can I start over?

- My favorite dumpling is ground pork or chicken.

- The edamame and ginger.

They happen to be vegan, but I think they're the most flavorful.

- My mom's kimchi and pork and mash tofu for dumplings.

- Soup dumplings actually, or Xiao Long Bao.

- I was introduced to soup dumplings, I thought that was amazing, but not the first time, so I didn't know and I bit right into it and it just scalded my mouth.

- Chicken jiaozi, they're small, almost empanada-like dumplings that have chicken inside.

- Probably shumai, it is steamed, wrapped in a wonton, with pork and shrimp.

- If it's a cold snowy day, it's the dumpling that's in chicken and dumpling.

- My favorite dumpling would be a chicken dumpling.

The way that it's made still feels very home to me.

I don't even remember what I said honey.

[gentle guitar music] - An hour and a half, south of rural and quaint Greenwood, is the state capital, Jackson.

Here my dumpling research points me to one the world's most ubiquitous dumplings, the matzo ball.

A Jewish tradition that highlights, for better or for worse, the skill of the cook who makes them.

- Come on in.

- Hey.

- How are you, I'm Petra.

- I'm good.

Vivian.

- Susan.

- Hey, nice to meet you.

- Nice to meet you.

- And I'm Alli, nice to meet you.

- Nice to meet you all.

We're trying to get to the root of what a dumpling is.

I believe matzo balls are like a quintessential world dumpling.

- The first time I made matzo balls, they were like rocks.

So I said, I'm coming to watch Petra and learn how to make her matzo balls.

- My husband's Jewish, and his mother a self-described terrible cook, and she made matzo balls for us that were just like baseballs.

So I thought that I could do better, and I didn't do much better, so I'm hoping that I can learn something to take home.

So Petra, you're the expert here.

- Yes.

[laughing] This is what my mother did when I was a child.

- You have an interesting accent.

- I'm originally from Germany.

- How long have you been in Jackson?

- 30 years.

- And how in the world did you get here?

- Both of my parents survived the holocaust.

I met this lovely soldier.

- Fell in love with a soldier.

- But that's how I came here.

So we made home here.

- Yeah, you made home here.

Okay so let's start making some matzo balls.

- This is from yesterday.

It is a whole chicken, and you have to cook it for about an hour, hour and a half.

- That's a lot of fat on there?

- That's schmaltz.

- Schmaltz.

- Nowadays, all our chickens don't have that much fat.

So you need to go and get yourself a fat chicken.

[laughing] - Where do you get a fat chicken?

- Where do you get a fat chicken?

- That is my secret, where I got that from.

Do you want to take the schmaltz off, it's so easy.

- Sure.

- So tell me about you?

- I did a fellowship at the Institute of Southern Jewish Life.

I'm here because as these women stop wanting to do the cooking, the homemade recipes.

The new generation needs to take over.

- That's a big old bird.

[women chattering] So there's no chicken in the soup?

- In original matzo ball chicken soup there is no chicken.

- But I would imagine if it's just broth and the matzo balls, and it's really about the dumpling itself.

- Exactly.

- And making the most of this chicken, because you've used the chicken to make the broth, and then you're gonna use the fat, which people rarely use.

And then you can use that big old bird for something else?

- And you need to understand the origin.

When people did not have much money, every piece had to be used.

The matzo meal came from the matzo crackers which weren't eaten, and you put it into a cloth bag and just save them up.

So then later on, you take them and you mash them up in the cloth, this is what it's gonna look like.

Now this happened to come out of a box.

I think we're gonna let you whip the eggs, and that's where the magic is.

- So the magic is in how you whip the eggs?

- There's a certain amount of time.

- And how long?

- Just enough.

- Just enough.

- How did we know that was enough?

- She couldn't take it anymore.

[laughs] [fork rapidly clinking] - This is enough, we have a couple bubbles, this is enough.

Now we're putting matzo meal in there, and you just stir it, but lift it.

Don't stir, just lift it.

- Lift - You lift it slowly.

- Now we need to have schmaltz.

So now you just-- - Lift.

- You're lifting.

Mix it up really good.

- So this is parsley?

- This is [speaks in foreign language] or parsley.

Stir this in.

- Stir it up?

- Yes, please.

So now we're gonna let it rest.

[gentle music] - Tell me how did Jews get to Mississippi in the first place?

- Typically they were peddlers, so they would travel up and down the Mississippi River with their wares.

And eventually they settled down and many started stores in small towns.

And that's where they built communities.

- First as traveling salesmen, and then as store owners, Jewish immigrants became part of the South's booming agricultural economy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Built in the late 1860s, Jackson's Beth Israel Congregation became the first official Jewish house of worship in the state.

During the Civil Rights movement, the Ku Klux Klan bombed the synagogue here in Jackson.

In the wake of the incident, the Jewish community did not hide, instead they remained a vibrant part of Jackson today.

Celebrating their culture through food.

- We're gonna turn this on.

Okay, so you put schmaltz on your hands a little bit.

You know schmaltz is good for everything.

- I could rub it on my skin and get lotion.

- Smell like a chicken.

[Susan laughs] So I've got schmaltz, or chicken fat on my hands and I'm gonna scoop up a little bit.

- That's more than enough.

And next time, just a little bit less fat.

- Yeah, look at that.

- You don't really wanna touch them a whole lot.

Because it's supposed to stay cold.

- These remind me, they look like cornmeal dumplings that you would drop into a pot of collards.

- Okay, yeah.

- Like this, it was a way to just make the most of what you had.

- Exactly, and that's really what it's all about.

It's boiling.

That's what we don't want.

Then they would fall apart.

- That happened to me.

- You need to really simmer them for about 20 minutes.

You can see, they're rolling now, that's what it needs to look like, roll.

- Oh my gosh, they're dancing.

- Yes.

yeah they're dancing, yeah, they're dancing.

- You see how golden the soup is?

- I do, it's beautiful.

[slurping] Mm.

- Yeah there's so much flavor in the broth.

- You know it all started with the [speaks in foreign language], Yiddish for dumpling.

And throughout Europe, dumplings are just stretching the meals.

- Yes, one of the things that I had a hard time understanding, but I think I do now.

Is the difference between this type of dumpling and a filled, precious dumpling.

That is a way to stretch the meat that's inside.

- If you put it in something, it makes it look very nice, but it was only the scraps from yesterday and the day before, the leftovers.

- And you used it.

- And you just made a new meal out of it.

- Well thank you so much for this.

[slurping] - Ah, very good.

[gentle music] - I've done my dumpling due diligence, Mississippi style, now it's on to Durham, North Carolina where I'm joined by Jim Diecchio, the chef we've hired for our new restaurant.

We're at Mothers and Sons, and dumplings are on the docket.

Hey.

- Hello.

- How are you?

- Good, how you doing?

- Good, good.

- Nice to see you.

- Nice to see you.

- Nice to see you.

- So Jim, this is Josh, or Skinny.

- Nice to meet you.

- Everybody calls you Skinny, so I'm showing him around some of my favorite places in Durham.

And you know I love this place.

- Everybody loves pasta.

- Yeah, yeah.

Our new restaurant, Benny's Big Time Pizzeria is gonna be like an olive garden where everything is handmade, had a baby with a Pizza Hut that has a wood oven.

It's the first restaurant that we've ever opened, that the menu's not Southern.

And that challenge is both exciting and scary.

I don't wanna mess it up.

Hence all the Italian dumpling research.

All right, so can we watch you do this?

- Yes of course.

- And so your people come from the southern most part of Italy?

- Correct, and the poorest areas.

At least in those days.

And then the further south you go, the poorer it gets and the more simple the pastas.

That's where you see more gnocchi and semolina pastas.

- Would you call it a dumpling?

- Yeah, I would consider it a dumpling.

Like the word, gnocchi, means dumpling.

- That's what I think, yeah, we've been having this conversation about what is a dumpling.

But in my culture, we have this thing called chicken and pastry.

And the pastry, we roll it out, then it gets boiled in a broth.

There's no clear definition I guess.

This is beautiful to watch.

- Yeah, they say you don't see too many people doing this in the restaurant industry anymore.

Sometimes making pasta feels like you're just playing with your food.

- What's this?

- This is a more traditional dumpling dough.

It's just semolina and double zero flour and water.

So it's like the poor dough.

This would be like a typical gnocchi board.

It creates those grooves.

- And the grooves, are there to pick up sauce?

- Yeah you're making little channels.

Also on the menu here we have Cavatelli, which is with this board, which is called a cavarola board.

So we do the traditional, [speaking in foreign language] style.

Pork sausage and broccoli rabe and some pecorino.

And some chilis.

And that's the dish on the menu that comes directly from my family.

Is it on the menu now?

- It is, and it will never go away.

It's sort of paying homage to my family.

The name of the restaurant's Mothers and Sons.

But what's awesome is my grandmother got to come here.

There's all the family pictures on the wall over there.

So she got to sit amongst all of her brothers and sisters.

- I bet that was such an awesome moment for her.

- Yeah, she said, I felt like a movie star.

[laughing] - Thank you.

- Yes of course, appreciate it.

- All right Jim, so are you ready to eat?

- Yeah.

- 'Cause I am, I'm gonna eat this raw piece of dough.

- All that pasta made me hungry.

- Oh my god, I know.

So we're gonna go to Toro, which is another one of my very favorite places.

You'll hear me say, "this is one "of my favorite places to eat," a lot when I'm in Durham.

And Pizzeria Toro is absolutely one of those places.

And one of the things I love most there, are the ricotta dumplings.

- Hi, how are you?

- Starving.

- All right, you came to the right place.

- Yum, can we get the ricotta dumpling and the broccolini.

- Okay, wonderful, I'll go put those in for you.

- Thank you.

[gentle music] - All right, we have the broccolini, and the ricotta dumplings.

- Mm, they look good.

- Thank you.

- So it looks like they boiled them, then browned them.

- Yeah.

- Hey guys.

- How are you?

- I'm good, how are you guys?

- Good.

- I'm much happier now.

- It's funny how food and wine can make you get happy.

- We're opening a place in Wilmington.

I thought I'd bring him to Durham and take him to some of my favorite places that do some of the same things that we're gonna do.

- Cool.

- And these are ricotta dumplings.

- Ricotta dumplings, yeah.

When we make them, we let them sit in semolina for a couple days.

So the semolina right around the edge hydrates and it forms like a skin.

So it's almost like a little ravioli, when you eat it, 'cause the inside stays still pretty liquidy.

- So what do you think makes a dumpling a dumpling?

- It's such a crazy question because there's so many different things that a dumpling can be.

A Japanese dumpling is totally different from a Chinese dumpling, which is completely different from an Italian dumpling.

And we have an apple dumpling on our dessert menu.

Which is a completely different animal then this kinda thing, it's got nothing at all to do with it.

I think primarily it has to be flour.

There's some kind of a dough.

- That's interesting, yes, but there's some reason we assigned the word dumpling to-- - A million different things, depending on.

It's like we made a catchall phrase.

Someone put this in the dumpling category.

- Right, we're gonna dump it in the dumpling category.

[laughing] In East and North Carolina, every cook worth their broth knows about a regional dish called chicken pastry.

It's the epitome of old school.

And I'd argue, it represents our region's dumpling.

If you know what's up, you know that spent laying hens make the best broth for pastry.

So to find one of those, I turned to Christy Crumpler, my chicken dealer.

- So Christy, we are going to make chicken and pastry.

We're going to Warren's after this.

And I'm gonna make pastry with spent laying hen.

- Okay, what we consider a spent hen, is basically a chicken that has gone out laying production.

They've got a lot of fat built up on them and that's why they tend to make good pastries and chicken and rice.

- Right, it's got a lot of flavor.

- A soupy broth's gonna come out better.

- You would never take one of those two year old hens, cut it up and fry it, 'cause it would be tough.

- It would be really, really tough.

- She's a tough old bird, that's where that comes from.

And those are all-- - These are laying hens.

- Let's go over there and look at them.

The chickens seem extra happy today.

- Oh they love days like today, 'cause this is when all your insects are pulling to the top of the ground, your warmth inside.

Like they're in hog heaven right now.

- Because of the rain?

- Yeah.

[gentle music] - If you're trying to make something like pastry, and we keep saying pastry, but really what we're making is chicken and dumplings.

- My chicken and dumplings, my grandma used to make the round ones.

And then our pastry, what I call chicken pastry are the strips.

Is that the way you were grown?

- Yeah, like pastry you roll out.

- Roll it long.

- It's a noodle in my opinion.

I think a noodle is also a dumpling, but-- - The dumpling I say is like when my grandma would pat it out into like the little round patty-like.

- And what was in it, flour?

- Flour, make a little egg maybe.

- And some kind of fat?

- Yes, yes to get it to kinda stick like that.

But they, now that's my favorite, even above the pastry.

[ratchet clacking] [wings loudly beating] - Lord.

- I know.

[chuckles] - Well, can I get a spent hen?

- Yeah, we can get that for you.

- Awesome.

[gentle music] In my little corner of eastern North Carolina, Miss Lillie, Miss Betsy and Miss Mildred are well known for their cooking prowess.

Have you ever rolled out pastry?

- I don't do all that stuff.

- I'm not underestimating you, I just ah-- - A jack of all trades and master of nothing.

[Vivian laughs] - Y'all have already been over here, shredding the chicken.

- Mm hm, yes.

- And how long did it cook?

- About two hours.

- Okay, so you want it falling apart.

And do you put anything else in the water, other then the chicken?

- Black pepper, a little salt and chicken base.

- Miss Betsy, you're the pastry expert here.

- We're gonna put the flour in the pan.

- Okay.

[gentle music] [paper lightly rustling] Everything starts the same way, with lard.

What is that?

- Just cold water.

- Cold water, and it's important that it's cold?

- Yeah.

- All right, so you're bringing it together, kind of like a biscuit?

- Yes.

- Touch it Miss Betsy, see if I got enough flour in.

- So you roll that out like a flat disc.

[gentle music] [knife scrapping] So wide.

So you're gonna cut it into, sheets.

That makes sense.

Miss Betsy is like a master baker.

You are, everybody talks about it.

- Yes sir-- - And if Miss Lillie says it.

- She's good.

- She doesn't even call me a good cook.

- 'Cause you cook that strange stuff.

[laughing] Miss Betsy cook my kinda food.

Down to earth food.

- You put your chicken in the bottom.

A layer of this, then your chicken.

Then a layer of this, and go up.

- Okay, so you layer it in the pot.

I've never known that.

So you put pastry down first, or you put chicken down first?

- Chicken down first.

So inside this pot here, Miss Mildred and Miss Betsy are layering chicken that was picked from the carcass, and the pastry and the broth that they cooked the chicken in.

And that's just black pepper, and water, salt and chicken base.

How long are we cooking it?

- I would say at least 10 minutes.

- 10 minutes.

This smells great.

- People we're ready.

- This is the perfect day for pastry.

'Cause it's kinda cold outside and wet.

- How can you tell?

- It's just a different taste.

- Oh yes, this is really good.

- It is really, really good.

- You need a sweet potato with it.

- That's what people would eat with it?

- - [Vivian] We're gonna put a version of guinea and pastry on the menu at our restaurant that we're opening in Wilmington.

It's actually gonna be made from ricotta cheese and some flour and eggs.

But everything else will be the same.

Like we'll cook the guinea the same way and drop the dumplings in.

So thank you all, today.

Feel like I haven't had a master class.

[gentle music] My Italian dumpling research, it forms a dish on the opening night menu at Benny's.

Opening nights are usually pretty stressful.

And this one is really no different.

- Your shelf on top of the pizza station, dirty.

And look there's still tickets up there.

This shelf here, which I even pointed out yesterday, still dirty, still dusty, still.

And take care of your equipment and all of our brand new equipment, this is the nicest kitchen I've every worked in, I wanna take really good care of it.

I want it to be brand new for as long as I'm in this building, okay.

Thank you.

- So tonight is the first night of service for Benny's.

So, we'll see.

So you're breaking this down for the guinea and dumplings?

- Yes ma'am.

- Have you ever worked with guinea hens before?

- I have, a lot.

I like it better than chicken.

- Oh yeah.

[gentle guitar music] - Basically what I'm gonna do is brown these up for stock.

And they'll be rich and delicious.

I'm making gnudi, this is a different type of pasta.

It's more of a grandma style dumpling.

One whole egg, so I'm gonna beat it, all the way up.

- So gnudi is basically like the filling for ravioli?

- That's right, it means nude in Italian, and it doesn't have anything on the outside.

- So let me ask you, is the mustache an attempt to look more Italian?

- It's just something I do sometimes.

It's not a big deal.

[Vivian laughs] We got ricotta, we're gonna put it in here.

Little bit of Parmesan cheese.

And I really do think, in recipes like this, that the recipe itself is not that important.

Because this is a feel situation.

You want it to be as tender as you can, and still hold together.

- So if you were a grandma, you would add flour and see if it holds, and then maybe add a little more if you need to, see if it holds.

- Absolutely, so we're gonna go straight in with the eggs.

In a perfect world, we could cook this and it would stay together, but pretty risky, so we're gonna add a little flour.

And that's gnudi right there, it really is gonna be mainly cheese.

But we're gonna put it in a piping bag and pipe it directly onto pan of semolina.

The semolina draws out a little bit of the moisture from the cheese and actually creates a pasta on it's own, on the outside.

- So how would you define dumpling?

Because actually I think that noodles are dumplings.

- Some noodles, for sure.

- And you have to have a starch.

- Absolutely.

- It has to be introduce to water or steam.

- Yes, that sounds fair to me.

So I'm gonna set these in the walk-in, and they'll be ready roll.

[gentle music] - How's everybody feeling?

[Ben laughs] - How do you feel?

- I feel kinda nauseous.

- You guys ready in three, you need a few more minutes?

- Hey mom.

- How are you?

How are you mom?

- Good honey, how are you?

- I'm good.

- Let's get a drink.

- Let's get a drink.

- You too, you too, I'm so glad you all made it.

- No, not at all.

All right, I'm gonna go to my post.

All right, so you're going to 13, Carson, you're plating a dumpling?

- Yes ma'am.

- Okay, thank you.

This dish bridges the cooking traditions of two cultures.

It's an Italian dumpling made with ricotta cheese, but it's served like my culture's chicken pastry, in a broth made with guinea hen and greens.

All right, can you take this chicken and dumpling to table 13, and the dumplings are called gnudi, and they're made with cheese, okay?

- Here's your chicken and dumplings.

- It's good, it's different.

- My god, they just melt in your mouth.

- That was really good.

[Vivian laughs] - Have you all ever had matzo balls from grandma?

- They stink.

- You know what that is?

- Matzo balls.

- Potatoes.

- It's chicken fat.

Chicken fat or schmaltz goes inside a matzo ball.

Theo, I'm gonna give you this, and will you make it into a little ball, but hey, be gentle, you don't wanna press it.

Okay now I'm gonna give you some too Flo.

You gotta be gentle.

- I am.

- Matzo balls liked to be handled gently.

Like this.

[gentle music] It's actually better if they're not perfectly round, you know why?

Because when you put them in the chicken broth to cook, if they have some irregularity, they dance.

They roll around and dance.

Did my trip down dumpling lane definitively answer, what is and what is not a dumpling?

In the literal sense, probably not.

But what I know is that dumplings stretch stuff.

Morsels of meat and bits of vegetables feel like more when wrapped up in a dumpling skin.

Broth becomes a meal with dumplings in it's depths.

And dumplings, they stretch time.

The time people spend together preparing and sharing dumplings, becomes more then moments in a day.

That time morphs into memories, laughter, stories and love.

Dumplings are hard to define.

Because they mean so much.

[gentle music] - To order Somewhere South on DVD, visit shopPBS.org.

This program is also available on Amazon Prime Video.