She sits in the middle of her Los Angeles restaurant, piling a big spoonful of kimchi, tofu, and pork filling into a damp dumpling skin. Her fingers work deftly, folding the thin sheet into neat corner pleats. Press, pinch, fold over. Repeat. The tray quickly fills up with plump, flour-dusted parcels.
“They’re a blend of North and South,” Kim Jung Yi said of her dumplings, her nimble fingers never stopping. “I try to tailor to Southern tastes by including one or two ingredients they like, but the recipe is Northern.”
By north, she means her home country, North Korea. She fluffs her fat kimchi dumplings with minced tofu—North Korean style—but also adds handfuls of sweet potato starch noodles, a popular ingredient in South Korean-style dumplings....