Thursday, March 31, 2005

It's time for another Recipe - Wontons

I have been making wontons since I could hold a pastry brush. They are a treasured part of my family history. We used to make them assembly line style with my mother premaking the filling and then one person putting a spoonful of filling inside, another person brushing the wonton skin with egg wash and another person would seal the wonton. When an extra cousin was around we would assign said cousin the job of taking the won ton skin out of the packages, separating itself from the other won ton skins.

The traditional filling my mother made went the shu mai route with the base being ground pork. Depending on who was making it, onions, scallions, shreed carrots, peas, ginger, garlic and all kinds of Asian seasonings were added. When I struck out on my own, I decided initially decided to make it vegetarian with tofu as the base. It then evolved to a more har gow type of filling with the addition of shrimp. In its current incarnation, there are a few cubes of salmon included which gives it an even more divine flavor. This dish is extraordinarily hard to make a recipe for because it just something I throw together with nary a thought to measurements. But several people have clamored for the recipe so I will included it here for posterity's sake. Once again follow your own tastes when it comes to flavors. This is truly go with the flow time. And seriously folks, you need a food processor for this one.

Wontons

1 package wonton skins
1 egg for egg wash

Filling
1 scallion
1 tablespoon minced ginger
2 cloves of garlic
1/2 a block of firm tofu that has been squeezed of the water
1/2 pound of raw peeled shrimp
1/4 pound of salmon meat
1 shot of sesame oil
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon oyster sauce (optional)
Pinch of sugar (optional)
1/2 teaspoon thai chili sauce
1 egg
1 tablespoon cornstarch

Throw all of the filling ingredients into a food processor and pulse until smooth. Cajole your friends into helping. Place 1 teaspoon of filling onto the wonton skin. Brush 2 adjacent sides with egg wash. Seal tightly so that there are no air bubbles. Fill a pot 3/4 full of oil and wait ten minutes for the oil to heat up (Fill the damn wonton at this time!). Fry until a golden color. These are excellent frozen and reheated in an oven. In some cases it's better because the baking leeches out the oil. Enjoy. Give to the friends who helped you and dangle front of the friends who didn't.

1 comment:

foody said...

These sound amazing! I am definitely going to make these soon! I have a package of wonton wrappers and was trying to figure out what to do with them. I found some more ideas on what to do with wonton wrappers on another DC blog. Check out www.autoFOODography.com -- really interesting stuff!