Wontons and White Girls

Happy Chinese New Year! 2010 is the Year of the Tiger

Answer me this: Is there a better way to spend Chinese New Year than making traditional wontons with a bunch of white girls? The correct answer is... No. In fact, making wontons with a bunch of white girls (white super-awesome-geoscientist-girls, to be exact) is pretty much the only way to spend Chinese New Year! I highly recommend it.

Many of you know that the Litz wonton recipe (formerly of the Mah family) produces some of the most delicious wontons known to man. What you probably don't know is that this kind of perfection is attained through approximate measurements, ratios and memory. It is a recipe that is difficult to quantify as a written set of instructions. In fact, my steps of instructions (created with the help of my mom) at one point reads, "Add oyster sauce until the colour looks right." How do I know when the colour looks right? Oh... I just know. You know? And how much sesame oil do you add? "Enough until you can slightly smell it." It's that kind of recipe...

Jill, Jasmine and Paige arrived on Friday after work. All of them were wonton-newbies, having never taken part in the wonton making process before. Although they missed the meat mixing (really quite boring, since you just chuck everything into a food processor), they were all ready for the best part-- wonton wrapping!

There are two roles in wonton wrapping- the meat scooper, and the wrapper. Traditionally in our household, the wrappers heckle the meat scooper (e.g. "What were you thinking!? There is too much/not enough meat on this wrap! Fix these proportions! Are you blind? You should be downgraded to wrapping!") But since Jill, Jasmine and Paige were newbies, I got off heckle-free. Perhaps it's because their attention was half-glued to the Olympic opening ceremonies.

Essentially, wonton wrapping works like the diagram below, where the raw beaten egg acts like glue to hold the wrap together.

I give props to these girls for their wrapping skills. I have to admit, Tom and I have made wontons with several other sets of white people... And many of those occasions ended with me covertly re-wrapping wontons so that meat didn't come out while they were boiling! I'm not sure if it's the raw egg yolk, or the raw meat, but people don't seem too keen on getting their fingers in there to seal everything up-- but it's very important! Jill, Jasmine and Paige were fearless. They didn't mind getting a little floury and egg-yolky.

Jill, Jasmine and Paige wrapping away.

After the wontons are wrapped up, you bring a big pot of water to rapid boil. Then you toss in some wontons. Once they start to float, you give them a couple more minutes to cook, then scoop them out into bowls. Now they look like tiny little brain packages.

Jill says it best, "They look just like the should! Like restaurant wontons!"

And of course, while all this meat mixing and wrapping is going on, you are also heating and simmering the broth. The broth contains suey choy, shitake mushrooms, water chestnuts, and chinese pork sausage. Theoretically, the broth and the wontons will be ready at the same time so you can scoop them into a bowl together.

Yum yum!

And voila! Your meal is ready! Jill, Jasmine and Paige-- thanks for an excellent evening, and a delicious meal!

Ed-- thanks for your guitar skills!