Mandu

Mandu is the Korean dumpling: a thin wheat wrapper closed over a filling of minced pork, pressed tofu, spring onion and often kimchi or glass noodles. The same dumpling takes a different name with each cooking method — jjin-mandu steamed, gun-mandu pan-fried until crisp, mul-mandu boiled, or mandu-guk when it floats in a clear broth. Paris restaurants almost always list it as a starter, by six or eight.

It is dipped in soy sauce cut with vinegar, sometimes sharpened with chilli flakes. Eat it in one or two bites without cutting it, so the juice stays inside. Ordered for the table, it is shared while the mains are coming; in its broth version it becomes a full dish eaten alone.