[primarily
MIT/Boston usage] Jiao-zi (steamed or boiled) or Guo-tie
(pan-fried). A Chinese appetizer, known variously in the plural as
dumplings, pot stickers (the literal translation of guo-tie), and
(around Boston) `Peking Ravioli'. The term `rav' is short for
`ravioli', and among hackers always means the Chinese kind rather
than the Italian kind. Both consist of a filling in a pasta shell,
but the Chinese kind includes no cheese, uses a thinner pasta, has
a pork-vegetable filling (good ones include Chinese chives), and is
cooked differently, either by steaming or frying. A rav or
dumpling can be cooked any way, but a potsticker is always the
pan-fried kind (so called because it sticks to the frying pot and
has to be scraped off). "Let's get hot-and-sour soup and three
orders of ravs." See also oriental food.
