Shanghai style wonton made easy

Chopped up ingredients in a big bowl.

At home, having wontons for dinner means having 20 (or 40 for my brother) wontons served in simple broth. Never with noodles and the filling of the wontons consists mostly vegetable. This is what I called Shanghai style wonton.

To make the wontons properly, Grandma uses Chinese bok choy, which needs to be precooked, drained and cooled. Yes, you have guessed it. This process put me off from making it, because it is too time consuming, then Mum came to the rescue and this is her no fuss not-the-best-but-the-easiest-wonton recipe.

Ingredients are now well mixed and ready to be assembled into wontons.

Wontons are ready to be cooked

Ingredients (serves 2 - preparation time: 1 hr - cooking time: 15 mins):

1. Chinese mushrooms - 6 or more
2. Chicken/Pork mince - 400g 
3. White pepper - 1/2 tsp
4. Garlic - 2 cloves
5. Chinese chives - 400g
6. Carrots - 400g
7. Sesame oil - about 3 tbp 
8. Salt - 2 tsp
9. Wonton pastry - 1 pack (about 50 sheets)
10. Vege/chicken/pork stock to serve [1]

Steps:

1. Soak Chinese mushrooms in warm water for at least half an hour or soak them in water and leave them overnight in the fridge. Chop them up once they have soften. Make sure you press out all the water from the mushrooms. 
2. In a big bowl, mix mince, white pepper, chopped garlic together. Leave them in the bowl and move on to the next step. 
3. Chop Chinese chives, carrots into small pieces (chop them as small as you can, try not to use a food processor if you can manage)
4. After all the cutting, the mince should be well flavored. Now, put all the vegetables, sesame oil and salt into the same big bowl and mix well. The mixture should be sticky, if not, add more sesame oil until all the ingredients are glued together. [2]
5. Google how to wrap a wonton on YouTube, there are no rules, as long as it does not have an opening. The trick is to use water as the "glue".
6. To make sure the wonton filling is ready, make a few wontons and cook them in some boiling water and make sure you are happy with the taste. Once you are happy, then make all the fillings into wontons. [3]
7. To cook the wontons, bring about 1.5L to boil, then put about 10-15 wontons in the boiling water at a time. Once the water is boiling again, add a cup of cold water and when it boils again (this is to ensure the wonton content is cooked). Take out the wontons and place it in a clean big bowl filled with cold water (so that the wontons wouldn't stick to each other when you continue cooking). 
8. Repeat step 6 until all the wontons are cooked. 
9. Serve the cooked wontons with some nice hot stock/broth or my super lazy "soup" below. Enjoy!!

Tips:

[1] Instead of stock, the wontons can be served in a very basic "soup" which consists of left over mushroom water from Step 1, light soy sauce, a bit of sugar and sesame seed oil.

[2] The filling should not have any juice, if there is, the wonton pastry will tear when you assemble it.

[3] Don't skip this taste test step, this is to ensure you got the filling right, otherwise, all the wontons will  be wasted.

Bunny Chow in Wimbledon

Bunny Chow from Kafe Karahi in Wimbeldon

Bunny Chow has got nothing to do with Bugs Bunny or Chow mein, it is in fact a South African dish which consists of curry inside half a loaf of bread.

We had it with lamb curry which itself is pretty amazing, the meat was tender and the sauce was tasty. Next time when I forget to cook rice after making the curry, Bunny Chow it is!!

Turn leftover rice to congee

Grandma never let us waste any food, rice in particular. She told us rice farming is a very labour intensive task, she also said if you leave a grain of rice on the plate, then your future spouse will have a pimple on his/her face... right...

So for breakfast this freezing morning, I made congee (or jook) using a bowl of cooked rice. All I did was pouring about 3-4 bowls of water with the bowl of rice into the pot, bring it to boil, then simmer it for about an hour. This makes a basic congee.

As you can imagine: rice + water = bland food, therefore, I made a simple spinach side dish to go with it.

1. fresh garlic - one clove, finely chopped
2. light soy sauce - 2-3 table spoon
3. spring onion (optional) - 1/2 cup, chopped
4. frozen spinach* - 3 cups, steamed

Now, mix 1-3 in a big bowl, then add the spinach in the bowl and that's it. Simple.

*Note: Fresh spinach can be used as well, instead of steam it, boil it till it is just cooked, run it under cold water, then chop it up and remove all excess water by squeezing it using your hands.

Food tube map

After the awesome London tube map in Maori art work, here is another fine example of what people do with the London tube map - rename the stations with food names!!

If you are not sure what the actual station names are, here you go:

• Paddington (Puddington)
• Edgeware Road (Eggware Road)
• Notting Hill Gate (Notting Hill Cake)
• Mornington Crescent (Mornington Peasant)
• Charing Cross (Charing Croissant)
• Tottenham Court Road (Tortellini Count Road)
• Highbury & Islington (Highbrie and Biscuit Tin)

Wouldn't it be nice if all the station names changed into food names? Like change Gospel Oak to Gospel Oat... still around 252 stations name to change, ok maybe not now.