While I was making today's lunch, I was thinking about all the things that I could say about making wontons. First of all, it is a common family activity to do together during holidays to wrap wontons together. Second, deveining and peeling the shrimp sucks... I'll probably tell my future kids that shrimps are poisonous if consumed at home...to avoid the taste :) and third, I remember the last time I had wontons was when I was in Chicago having lunch with my friend and his law school buddies.. because it was so cold outside, I witnessed an odd moment of group think where all four of us ordered wonton soup at a Thai restaurant... Anyway, as I suggested in my previous post, you can make wontons with the leftover meat mixture. I we're a little pickier at the Hsu household so I made two types of wontons. For my mom and dad, I made pork and shrimp wontons and for my brother who decided to quit red meat for 6 months... just shrimp. I think the 1lb meat and 1/2 lb shrimp ratio would have been perfect to get through roughly two packs of wonton wrappers. I kept the meat and the shrimp separate so that each wonton would have a bite of shrimp!
Shrimp & Pork Wontons
Ingredients:Meat Mixture from the previous post
1/2 lb of shrimp (50/60 count) deveined and peeled cut into 1/3
1/2 teaspoon of starch
1 teaspoon michu (cooking wine)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 teaspoon white pepper
2 stalks of green onion chopped
1/4 cup of chopped jicama (gives it a nice crunch)
2 packs of wonton wrappers
bowl of water
** if you're making shrimp wontons, just combine everything besides the pork and you're ready to go!
Directions:
1. Combine shrimp with michu, salt and white pepper. In a separate bowl add the chopped jicama and green onion to the pork mixture.
2. Lay one wonton wrapper down on a clean surface in a diamond shape in front of you, place a 1/4 teaspoon of meat in the top half of the wonton wrapper and add one piece of shrimp.
3. Using your finger and some water moisten the inner edges of the top half and fold bottom half up to form a triangle shape (mountain). Seal the edges.
4.Pick the wonton up, push the base of the triangle upwards, making a little dimple in the wonton where the filling is and bring the two legs down and attach using water.
** if the explanation I've given is unclear check out these, I do it this way because my mom taught me.. it's the "taiwan style."**
5. Repeat until either the mixture runs out or the wrappers. Freeze the wontons for 15 minutes before cooking, it gives the skin better texture!
For the soup base I used green onion, a dash of salt, white pepper, dashi, sesame oil, and soy sauce. I use roughly 2 ladles of water from the pot that I'm cooking with wontons in.
