It being the party season and all.
Though I have to confess, this was our lunch yesterday. In our defense, the filling meets healthy – and is possibly even a decent way to get lots of vegetables into a children’s party plate.
The Recipe:
This recipe fills two dozen wonton wrappers – what we get in a packet of wrappers from the supermarket. Using bought ones makes the recipe really really fast and easy, but making your own isn’t hard especially if you use a pasta machine, so I’ll include the wrapper recipe too.
Part 1: Wonton Wrappers
You can buy wonton wrappers in the fridge at any supermarket these days, but if you make your own, you can use real egg. In a food processor, blitz until the dough just comes together (just a few seconds)
- ½ cup of flour (I use the same Laucke Wallaby Unbleached Bakers Flour that I use for my sourdough, but any high gluten flour will work)
- 1 large egg
- a couple of teaspoons of any light flavoured oil
- pinch salt
Flour the workbench well and knead very briefly, kneading in enough more flour to make a smooth, non-sticky, soft dough. Then leave it to rest for a few minutes while you make the filling.
Part 2: The Filling
For 24 ( a packet of skins) you need about two cups of filling when it is all raw. The inspiration for these actually came from harvesting the very last of the season’s cabbages out of the garden. I used cabbage, snake beans, carrots, and spring onions, all finely chopped and shredded. You can use a food processor to coarsely grate if you are in a real hurry.
Add a half thumb of ginger, finely grated, a couple of cloves of crushed garlic, a little chili to taste, a handful of herbs finely chopped (lemon basil, Thai basil, coriander, mint or a mixture) and a couple of teaspoons of light soy sauce.
Add a little oil to a wide pan or a wok, get it hot, and cook the filling, stirring, for just a couple of minutes. You are trying more to dry it all than to cook it, and best to leave undercooked rather than over.
Mix a spoonful of cornflour (corn starch) with water (or ordinary plain flour if you don’t have cornflour in the pantry). Take the vegetables off the stove and add a little of it to the hot vegetable mix, just enough to make it all sticky. Keep the rest for sealing the rolls.
Let the filling cool a little while you roll out the wrappers.
Part 3: Assembling and frying
If you are using home-made wrappers, use a pasta machine, or a rolling pin and a well floured benchtop, to roll out the dough till it is translucent thin. You will be cutting it into 10cm squares, so aim for a 10 cm wide pasta strip.
Put a teaspoonful of filling on each wrapper. Roll diagonally, folding the corners in. Use a finger dipped in the flour and water mix on the last corner to seal.
Wipe out your wok or pan and heat up a couple of centimetres of frying oil until it is quite hot. I usually use light olive oil for frying like this because it has mostly monounsaturated fats, it has a high smoke point and it’s fairly neutral flavoured.
Fry in two or three batches so you don’t overcrowd the pan, use tongs to turn them and fry for just a couple of minutes till they are brown and crispy.
You can keep them warm in an oven if you have to, but they are best eaten freshly cooked and hot with a soy and sweet chili dipping sauce.
These look so good. Linda – do you use a pasta machine yourself? I’m considering buying one but no idea where to start as there are so many and if they really do save time?
Hi Linda,
I was a bit slow to catch on, but like the others I’m so glad your back. I really need your inspiration and garden wisdom. This year is a disaster for my garden. No winter or spring rain,in fact no spring. Straight from winter to summer. Cockies and kangaroos have eaten or squashed everything including the fruit trees. No grass, no water but plenty of dust. Amazingly the tomatoes are doing well so far. Need to see your lovely photos so I can dream on.
Thank you Jane! To be truthful, I am a bit overwhelmed by all the welcome back messages. It’s not a newsworthy story – for a fair while two different members of my close family were going through major life upheavals, I was in the lucky position of having space in my life to help. Then it was being busy getting all my other balls in the air again and mulling over whether this is where I can best “honour my highest self”. Then blog needing some backend work updating theme etc (which I’m very pleased to have done – I look up my own recipes on a tablet and that works much better now.) Then, for a while, writing a “why I neglected this blog for so long” post was what was blocking me, till I decided I was just being up myself – probably no one had actually even noticed I was gone – and to just jump in. So here I am, and a bit aw shucks and grateful for the messages. We have had a beautiful year so far, but I feel for all those struck with this Godzilla el Nino. My son is working in Vanuatu with people forced to send kids to school with “bush rope” for lunch. It’s an inedible root, just fibre. It fills the stomach though. With luck, the late summer and autumn will bring rain.
Yes, I feel for the people of Vanuatu. At least I can go to the supermarket, and I don’ t have to watch my children starve. I have a lot to be thankful for, and am very glad to be living here really, dust and all.
I am so so glad to see you back Linda, I eventually did buy your book and now my garden is flourishing albeit time consuming, but I love it. I have 7 round permaculture gardens. The chook tractor is working well, so far (made it 10mths ago). I made these wontons this morning to take to a friends place for brunch and they were a hit. I was so proud to say that most of the veges were grown in my garden – my snake beans are doing so well. Thank you for all your great ideas and inspiration Linda