a weekend that winded up with won tons

Well it’s been such a well-rounded, wonderful weekend here that I just couldn’t bypass blogging.  A quiet friday night followed by a saturday brunch with the fabulous sadieandlance at podfood.  A lazy Saturday afternoon playing with the kids, a quick trip to the shops and back home for a cuddly family night in.  Sunday was filled up with passport preparation, sewing and house cleaning.  It was tolerable because I was able to top the day off by attending a Canberra Blogging meet-up and then home to make my yummy won ton soup.  Oh, you want the recipe? Why of course!

Won tons

200gm minced pork (or mince it yourself like I did!)

200gm green prawn meat

1/2 tin (about 100gm) of water chestnuts

All the coriander roots and stems from one store brought bunch, chopped

2 spring onions, chopped

1 tablespoon of oyster sauce (or a combo of hoi sin & fish sauce)

sprinkling of white pepper

Now you want to chop these up finely, but not too finely as part of the experience is sampling the lovely textures of the prawn, the chestnuts etc.  Mix it all together and get your won ton wrappers ready.  I brought mine ready-made, and cut from an Asian Supermarket for around $2.  It had about 60 or 80 wrappers so I encourage you to double the mixture above, make them all at once and freeze some won tons for another night!

Place a spoonful onto the wrapper and gather up, pressing the won ton wrapper firmly so it holds.  Wet fingers will greatly assist with this, but the wrappers are very thin and your wet fingers will be the cause of many rippings if you aren’t carefull!

Place on a plate and keep in fridge (wrapped in glad wrap) until ready.

Now for the soupy bit

You will need a litre of stock, I just use the store brought ones, but it would be so much more amazing with a home made stock.  I would also recommend not getting the salt reduced one.  You need the salty flavour to really bring this dish out, and you would just end up compensating with soy sauce anyway.

I place in some minced garlic, some roughly chopped spring onions (the rest of the bunch minus the two from the won tons) and cooked that on a gentle boil.  I then prepared some ready-made egg noodles – now if you prepare, go with rice noodles, think or thin but my preference is the Singapore noodle kind.  Now dump the won tons in the soup and also add any other veggies you may be interested in.  My choices are usually bok choy and/or choy sum and sometimes broccoli or green beans (depending whats in the fridge!).  Turn up the heat and wait till the water boils.  You may want to add some more water, and some soy sauce and fish sauce to taste (remember you are after a really delicate flavour , not a really robust one).

Get your bowl ready, add the now drained noodles, place a bunch of bean sprouts on top and ladle some soup out.  4 or 5 won tons is HEAPS! Top with some fresh coriander leaves and serve immediately.  For the adults we flavored ours with some hot chilli sauce, and I put a little hoi sin in the kids bowls.

Enjoy!

Of course, chopsticks are always an exciting part of dinner!

And sometimes we find new ways of using them

But eventually the food gets in

Advertisement