Sunday, March 2, 2008

Making tasty bags of Money!

Wow, what a laaazy weekend...as Jason noted, this is probably the first time he's ever called and woken me up. And I had gone to sleep around 11pm or so...and Jason called at Noon!!! Insane.

So my friends experienced first hand last week the mass of recipes I have to go through and it is...so to say...a mass. I have about 100 recipes plus several cookbooks I've been going through about 2-3 different recipes a week. And I have yet to get to Grace Young's cookbook! I'll get there eventually.

Honestly, I cook at least 4-6 servings whenever I get my act together because as we all know, leftovers are a professional worker's best friend! But then again, one tends to get tired of the same food day after day you know? So then I'll cook twice during the week and alternate the leftovers...but then there's too many leftovers! But too much is the lesser of the two evils anyway :)

I actually made this a couple weeks ago for a friend's pot luck and they got gobbled up pretty quickly. But I was amazed at how LONG it took me to wrap these little guys. Well, I'll let you see for yourself :)

Now, I get my ground pork from the Asian market mainly because the pork is ground a lot coarser than in a regular supermarket and especially because it's not prepackaged. I can actually watch them put the pork through the grinder which makes me a little warmer on the inside. It's just a personal preference so I don't think it's necessarily a big deal.

Pork and Shrimp Wontons

Ingredients:
1 lb Ground Pork
1/4 - 1/2 lb raw Shrimp
Scallions
2 tsp corn starch
2-3 TBsp soy sauce

1 box/tray of wonton wrappers
Some water OR egg white

Optional:
Fish Sauce
Sesame Oil

Prep Method:
1. Mix together the corn starch and soy sauce as well as the optional ingredients, if any. Set aside.
2. Rinse, de-shell and de-vein the shrimp. Dice finely.
3. Mix Pork, Shrimp and Scallions together.
4. Pour the Sauce over the filling mixture and mix again.

Now onto actually rolling the wontons...I've got pictures here for help :)

Rolling the wontons:
1. Fill a small dish with water (or the egg white) and have plenty of paper towels available.

2. Now we're ready to begin. Start with a single wonton wrapper and a small spoonful of the meat mixture. It's important not to overfill the wonton (underfilling is ok) because it'll be difficult to wrap it otherwise.

3. Next, we roll the wonton diagonally as shown. Start at one corner, fold it in towards the middle, and then roll towards the other corner. Dab a drop of water on the opposite corner to get the wonton "cannoli" to hold together.

4. Once you have the "cannoli" look going, take one of the ends and bend it upwards against the meat, almost like folding a sheet of paper.

5. With your thumb and forefinger, twist the folded end upwards. You'll be twisting from the "corner" of where you initially made the first fold...be careful not to tear the wonton wrapper. Put a dab of water where the parts of the wonton wrapper touch near the meat.

6. Repeat for the other corner:

7. Repeat for the next hour or so:


I ended up using just about the whole package of wontons so I'm guessing somewhere between 75 and 100 wontons. You can fry these little money-bags, steam, or even boil. They're a great extra snack with some Egg/Wonton noodles for a quick meal.

One more thing to note: When placing the finished wontons in a dish, make sure the wontons do not touch each other. They'll stick...which isn't good!!!

For freezing the wontons, freeze them on a plastic plate or something first (so they'd be separated), then you can throw them in a bag.

Enjoy!!!

No comments: