• photo by Alison Novak
• Mira Novak makes dumplings

They made Chinese food for my family several times during their two-week home stay, broadening our culinary horizons in the process.

My 6-year-old daughter, Mira, and I accompanied the girls to 99 Asian Market Eatery in Burlington to get the ingredients they needed. Both of us were amazed by the wide assortment of interesting products we’d never seen before — exotic fruits, snacks and sauces, and dozens of noodle varieties.

Queena and Viola introduced us to their home city’s signature dish, “Hot Pot,” a spicy stew used to cook thinly sliced meat and vegetables. They gave us four jars of “Old Mother,” a super-spicy condiment for rice and noodles with a photograph of a no-frills Chinese grandmother on the label.

But my favorite Chinese culinary treat was the dumplings they made for us. The little pillows were stuffed with ground pork and finely chopped cabbage and mushrooms, then boiled or pan-fried.

Weeks after the girls left, I still had dumplings on the brain. In a fit of late-night Googling, I realized dumpling wrappers can be stuffed with just about anything. After a lot of online food ogling, I decided to invite some friends over for dinner that weekend. We’d make dumplings with three fillings: chicken and veggies to appeal to the kids; red-curry shrimp geared toward the adults; and a decidedly non-Asian pea and ricotta, just for fun.

Food prep that evening was a family affair.

The Cuisinart food processor my husband and I got as a wedding present almost 10 years ago might as well have been a Tonka truck — my 3-year-old son, Theo, loved pushing the buttons and watching the food get sliced and diced at warp speed.

And I hadn’t realized how closely Mira had observed our Chinese visitors. She filled and sealed the dumplings with aplomb, artfully pleating the wrappers as Queena and Viola had done.

We steamed some of the dumplings in our rice cooker and pan-fried the rest. All were gobbled up by adults and kids alike.

When it comes to family meals, it seems that going outside our comfort zone often has a delicious pay-off.