Chicken Dumpling and Chrysanthemum Leaf Soup

To put a tasty canh on the table nightly requires that you make the most of staple ingredients like gio, a raw meat paste used extensively in the Viet kitchen. In fact, I freeze small amounts of this meat paste for whipping up classics like this fragrant soup laden with dumplings made from it. As the dumplings poach, they flavor the broth. Edible chrysanthemum leaves (cai cuc) add their deep green color and musty floral perfume. Called tong ho in Cantonese and shungiku in Japanese, the greens are sold at Asian markets and are easy to grow, too. Watercress may be substituted.