And so I’m back

From out of space

I just walked in to find you here with that sad look upon your face …the sad face I am referring to is that of my older brother’s. I have been a bit busy and whilst I have been taking lots of photos – I then never got around to writing the actual blog. So here goes…

My boyfriend loves Wonton Noodle Soup and will only eat it from one place (International Food Court in Morley if you ever get a chance). It’s divine – with slivers of pork, crunchy bok choy for texture, a gorgeous broth and then these silky full of flavour wontons… it’s basically Heaven in a bowl. And to top it all off they scatter crumbled pork crackling over the top.

I finally convinced him to let me have a go at cooking my own and suffice to say the results were amazing. Like most men (my younger and ‘opinionated about food even though he never cooks’ brother is one) if he goes for a second helping then you know you are onto a winner. It’s a little fiddly so unless you make it on a weekend, try and make the wontons ahead of time as they can sit in the fridge until you are ready 🙂

Ingredients:

• 2½ cup chicken stock
• 2½ cup water
• 1 tsp. soy sauce
• 3 garlic cloves, smashed
• 3 to 4⅛-inch thin fresh ginger root slices (approximately 1 oz.)
• 2 green onions, cut in halves
• salt and pepper to taste

• 4 oz. ground pork
• 1 tsp. soy sauce
• 1 tsp. Shaoxing wine (Chinese cooking wine, you can substitute with dry sherry)
• 1 tsp. cornstarch
• ¼ tsp. sugar
• ¼ tsp. sesame oil
• ¼ tsp. ground fresh ginger root
• 1 small garlic clove
• 1 green onion, finely chopped
• small pinch of black or white pepper
• 20 square wonton wrappers

• chopped green onion
• Cilantro leaves

Method

1. In a medium/large pot, add all ingredients for the soup. Cover, bring it to boil, reduce heat to low and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes. Turn off heat and let all the flavor come together. Meanwhile, let’s make wontons!

2. In a mixing bowl, combine all ingredients for the wonton filling and mix well with a spoon until cornstarch incorporated with other wet ingredients.

3. Take a wonton wrapper on your left hand(if you are right handed) and paint edges of square lightly with cold water using your finger tip. Put ½ teaspoon of filling in centre of wrapper. Fold in half, triangle shape and seal it tightly by pinching edges together with your fingers. Paint one of lower side corners of triangle with water and bring right and left corner together (water painted side down) and press well to make traditional curved wonton shape. Place wontons 1 to ½-inch apart on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Repeat until you finish with wonton filling and wrappers.

4. When your wontons are ready, discard solid ingredients from soup base and bring it to boil.

5. Carefully add wontons and cook for 10 to 15 minutes. wontons will be fully cooked in 3 minutes, but cook it longer so all flavour from wontons will melt in to soup. Taste and add salt and pepper to your taste at this point.

6. Transfer to a serving bowl, garnish with green onion, cilantro and pepper to your taste.

And then…being super sneaky…I fried a couple of the wontons while the wontons were cooking in the soup. So totally worth it! Would be amazing on a cold night, but no matter the weather I’d eat this haha.

Katie

Related Links:

• see more Welchy posts here