[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.