No picture, because they haven't actually been filled and cooked yet, but today I worked up the lemongrass-shrimp dumpling filling for the anniversary party, and it has been tested and stored in the fridge for near-future use.

I will warn you in advance that this is a somewhat imprecise recipe, due to circumstances beyond my control, but where it's imprecise, I should be able to get you pretty close. For this filling, you'll need:

• Two pounds of raw tail-on shrimp, any size
• One large bunch of scallions
• Two inches of ginger
• Two large cloves of garlic
• Lemongrass*
• Soy sauce*
• Rice wine vinegar*

THE LEMONGRASS "PASTE":

This is the wildly imprecise part. I wanted to incorporate a lot of fresh lemongrass into the dumbplings, but it can be so tough and fibrous that just chopping it and mixing it in seemed like a bad idea. So instead, I used my stick blender to puree a mixture of fresh lemongrass, soy sauce, and rice wine vinegar - the liquid is necessary to really get it to puree properly, plus it seasons and flavors the dumplings.

Since it was a touch-and-go experimental process that I messed with until I had a suitably lemongrassy result, what I can tell you is, I used one peeled stalk of fresh lemongrass, plus one of those plastic fresh herb containers of lemongrass, along with enough soy sauce and vinegar (roughly two parts soy to one part vinegar) to make a total of 2/3 cup of puree. I let it soak in the liqui in the fridge for a couple of days before using it, so that the lemongrass isn't too fibrous. 

OTHER PREP:

Thaw the shrimp and remove the tails. Put the shrimp into the work bowl of your food processor and pulse until the shrimp are completely chopped. Move the shrimp to a work bowl. Grate the ginger, put the garlic through a press, and finely mince the scallions. Combine everything and add the lemongrass, soy, and vinegar mixture. Combine thoroughly.

Fill the dumpling wrapper of your choice and steam or boil.