Cantonese–style Wonton Noodle Soup

Giant Cantonese–style wonton noodle soup

I was really really craving wonton noodle soup. This is a comfort food for me when I was very young growing up in HK and it has been ages since I've had homemade ones. Frozen wontons are available in supermaket and Asian stores but I find them incomparable to the homemade ones.

T-Rex helped me wrapped these and some of them are pretty ginormous. heheheh.

I confess, it's been awhile since I wrapped any dumplings and I was never very proficient at it. So I watched a few youtube videos on how to fold them. We experimented on a variety of ways to wrap them. It's really up to you, as long as the filling stay inside, it's all good!

Speaking of filling, it definitely needs to have prawns, chunky bits of prawns, so there's some texture to it and not just dry and meatbally.

Ingredients:

• A package of wonton wrappers
• A dozen frozen prawns
• 500g mince pork
• Minced ginger
• Spring onion
• Coriander
• White pepper
• Chinese cooking wine
• Sesame oil
• Light soya sauce
• Dry thin egg noodles
• Choy Sum or any green veggie
• Wonton soup mix (yeah I know! Being super lazy, but this mix powder gives me the exactly flavour of the soup of my childhood memory)

Directions

• Defrost the frozen prawns and soak them in cold water and then chop each prawn into 3.
• Mix prawns with pork mince, herbs and the other seasoning, keep stirring until the mixture seems gooey (at least 5 mins).
• Now you're ready to wrap, I generally use about 1 tablespoon of filling per wrapper. Fold it up whichever way you prefer. I liked folding them in half in triangles and then folding the ends behind and pressing it in so they look kinda like tortellinis - which I've always thought of as Italian wontons.
• Get your water boiling in a pot and add the wontons, cook until they float - at least 10 minutes.
• At around the 5 minute mark, add in the noodle, veggie and soup mix.
• There you have it, yummy homemade wonton soup. I think I'll add some shitake mushrooms to my filling next time.

Vietnamese Summer Rolls

Yummy vegetarian summer rolls

It was a particularly hot day here in M-town and I really didn't feel like cooking anything after work, or rather turning on the oven and making the apartment even hotter. So I figured some summer rolls would be a great idea, plus T-Rex can also help roll them.

I made vegetarian version for Meat-free Monday and had an addictive spicy peanuty dipping sauce to go with it. I think I crave the sauce more than the rolls.

Here's what you will need.

Ingredients:

• Rice paper
• Vermicelli
• Carrots
• Cucumber
• Mint
• Basil
• Spinach/Lettuce
• Hard tofu
• Peanut butter
• Hoisin sauce
• Fresh chilies

Directions:

• Start by julienne the carrots, cucumber and tofu
• Cook the vermicelli according to the direction on the package (soak in hot water) and then drain
• Get a big bowl and fill it with cold/room temperature water for the rice paper, if you use hot water the rice paper becomes too soft and tears very easily.
• Lay out the damp (but still "rigid") rice paper on a plate/board and add a handful of the noodles to the lower third of the paper, top up with the other fillings and herbs, be careful not to overload, else it's very difficult to wrap it up.
• By this time, the paper would have soften enough, fold the bottom up, then the two sides and then just roll it up. TaDa!
• For the sauce, I usually use a ratio of 2 spoons of peanut butter to 1 spoon of hoisin sauce, top with hot water to your desired sauce consistency and add fresh chopped chili to your spice level, I added about 4 chilies.
• Enjoy! You can try other cooked fillings as well, maybe smoked salmon, prawns, chicken slices. Be creative :)