Memories and Homemade Wontons

Some of my earliest and fondest food memories came from watching and helping my mom make wontons.  It was more than the food experience or the delicious shrimp and pork dumplings.  It was a family ritual and wrapping wontons with my mom was something my siblings and I loved doing. We would get really excited when we found out that mom was planning a wonton session.  I'm hoping in a few years when Baby A is old enough, she and I will share the same experiences.  In the meantime, I have to practice lots so that I'm well prepared to share my recipe with Baby A.  Since my wife K is allergic to shrimp, I made 2 batches of wontons here.  I have a ground pork and enoki mushroom wonton and a more traditional shrimp with pork wonton.  For the soup base I've deviated from the traditional stock of shrimp shells, pork bones and dai dei fish (dried flounder).  I went with chicken bones, celery, onion, and dai dei fish.  I've provide the recipes for the filling and the stock here.  You can buy wonton wrappers from most supermarkets.  To wrap, there are different methods, but the easiest to do is to put the wrapper in the middle of your hand, fill the middle with a little filling, wet the the sides of the wrapper and fold together and squeeze the skins together to make a little pouch with the filling in the middle.

I like these wontons in the soup on its own with a little scallion and cilantro.  I also like serving these with noodles in the soup to make it a hearty lunch.  Cook the wontons and noodles separately in a boiling pot of water, drain and then pour hot soup over the wontons and noodles.

Pork and Enoki Mushroom Wontons
1 lb of pork shoulder
1 teaspoon of corn starch
1 teaspoon of Chinese cooking wine
1 teaspoon of light soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon of salt
large pinch of pepper (preferably white)
1/2 teaspoon of sugar
drizzle of sesame oil
1 small egg
1 small package of enoki mushrooms coarsely chopped

Hand chop the 1 lb of pork shoulder until its a coarse ground.  You want it almost like ground meat but some little pieces that will give it some bite.  Mix in the rest of the ingredients together and its ready to fill.

Shrimp and Pork Mushroom Wontons
1/2 lb of pork shoulder
1 lb of medium sized shrimps peeled
1 teaspoon of corn starch
1 teaspoon of Chinese cooking wine
1 teaspoon of light soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon of salt
large pinch of pepper (preferably white)

1/2 teaspoon of sugar
drizzle of sesame oil
1 small egg


 Hand chop the 1/2 lb of pork shoulder until its a coarse ground.  Chop the peel shrimp coarsely.  You want it small enough to fit into the small wrappers but still a decent size you to give you a bit of bite.  The shrimps should be cut to about the size of the tip of your pinky.  Mix in the rest of the ingredients together and its ready to fill.

Too cook wontons, bring a pot of salted water to boil.  Put wontons into boiling water, careful  not to overfill or crowd the pot.  Work in batches if necessary.  Once the wontons float, they are ready.  

Wonton Soup Stock
Chicken bone/carcasses from 2 chickens
1 piece of dai dei fish (dried flounder) - found in Chinese herb aisle of most Chinese food markets
2 stalks of celery chopped
1 medium onion chopped
Light soy sauce
Salt and pepper
Sesame oil

Put the chicken bones into a pot of cold water. 
Bring the pot of water with chicken up to a boil. 
Discard the water and rinse the chicken in cold water.
Put the cooked chicken bones, dai dei fish, onions and celery into a pot with 5 litres of water.
Bring to a boil and turn down the heat immediately to medium-low and let the stock simmer for 1.5 hours.
Strain the soup stock and discard the bones and veggies.
Season the soup stock with salt and pepper, soy sauce and sesame oil.

My Inaugural Post

Why hello there and welcome to my new blog. I have never written or managed a blog before so be patient as I work out the kinks.  For those who know me, you know that I love food - all kinds of foods.  Refined foods, street foods, Italian food, French food, Chinese food....as long as you can safely digest it, I love it. Not only do I love food and visiting some of the best restaurants our city has to offer, I'm also an avid home cook.  I tend to post many pictures of my food creations to Facebook. Some of the comments I receive assume that I have a special culinary skill set but the reality is, I've never really been professionally trained.  Admittedly, I have been around food all my life and enjoy cooking. I've had a more than my fair share of practice time but I would say most of the dishes I cook at home are easy, accessible and focuses seasonal market inspirations. 

Both K (my wife) and I love Italian food and will have pasta at least once a week. I have a Chinese background so that figures prominently into our diets.  But you will find many different kinds of food in my day to day cooking.  I find inspiration from recipes but never cook off recipes.  Cooking to me is about intuition.  Recipes can guide you but when you cook at home, it will make life much easier if you can quickly adapt to what's in your pantry versus buying a package of something for a recipe when you won't likely use that ingredient again. 

K doesn't cook much but I don't mind.  I hate cleaning and that's her contribution to dinners at home, so I think we have a pretty good deal going here.  I'm here to share everyday home cook meals with anyone who is interested.  From time to time, I will post our culinary adventures outside of home and periodically, I may use this as a forum to vent on all kinds of crap that bother me.  If you are looking for fancy schmancy refined cooking techniques, this not the place (although I will have some of that here and there).  I'm hoping to post at least twice a week but we'll see how that goes.

In the meantime, here's some pics from the New Year's Eve meal I put together.  Enjoy!

 Our first course started with a platter of fresh PEI oysters and massive shrimp (u12 count).  Not much I need to say about that.  But for those who care, I steep my shrimp to get optimal texture and flavor.  I start with a pot of water, add a bunch of kosher salt, some black peppercorns, a bay leaf and a wedge of lemon.  I bring that to a boil and then throw my shrimp in.  I cover the pot, take it off the heat and let it steep.  How long? It depends on the size of shrimp.  For these massive ones, I steeped it for 6 minutes, then took it out and threw it in an ice bath right away to stop the cooking process.

 One of our favorite food items at the Lo household are crostinis.  We love them and make all different kinds.  For our second course, we had a crostini with roasted eggplant and red peppers, fresh buffala Mozzarella, walnut pesto and crusty calabrese bread.  The key to this is fresh ingredients.  Everything bought at the market and everything fresh.  It's all about the ingredients, oh and really really good olive oil.  I brush my calabrese bread with a garlic oil I made.  Eggplant is slow roasted in olive oil.  Peppers are broiled and peeled.  Pesto is uber simple - just puree toasted walnuts, parmesan, basil, garlic (i like to poach the garlic cloves for a minute or 2 first), olive oil and salt and pepper.  And if you are too splurge, splurge on the cheese and the olive oil, you won't regret it.  Its absolutely fantastic.

 Third course was our beef course. Beef carpacio with arugala, shaved grano padano, and pickled shallots.  Again this dish was uber easy to make. The thin slices of beef is sweet and velvety. I like the peppery contrast of the arugula, saltiness of the grano padano and the tartness of the pickled shallots.  And of course, really really good olive oil.  Start with a really good piece of meat. I used an 8 oz Canadian AAA filet.  I put that in the freezer for 2 hours. In the meantime I quick-pickled the shallots with white wine vinegar, a bit of dijon mustard and S&P.  After 2 hours, I take the filet out of the freezer, cut it into thin slices. I put each slice between 2 pieces of saran wrap and pound the slices of beef flat with a heavy fry pan.  Take a handful of arugula and toss it with a squeeze of lemon wedge and drizzle of olive oil.  Lay that on top of the beef, shave some grano padano and top arugula with some of the pickled shallots.  Season with salt and pepper and drizzle with really good olive oil.

 Next course we had was the French Laundry's version of Lobster mac'n'cheese.  Admittedly this is not a simple dish.  Thomas Keller's recipes tend to be made up of 5 other different recipes.  It's pretty complicated and definitely not a beginner's dish.  But if you can do it, it is luxurious, rich and so damn tasty.  Here's a dummy version of how I did this.

First I took 2 x 1&1/4 lb lobsters and steeped it (similar to what I did with shrimp above).  De-shelled the lobster and set the meat aside.  Took lobster body and shells and made a lobster broth with tomatoes, carrots and tarragon.  I let a 3 gallon pot reduce to about 2 cups of broth.  I strain this and add a cup of heavy cream. I reduce that by 1/3 again and strain it again. 

For the parmesan crisp, I just shave some fresh parmigiano-reggiano onto a silpat (about 2 teaspoon/crisp) and put it into a 325 degree oven for about 8 minutes.  Take it out, let it cool and put in a dry sealed container until ready to use.

For the lobster, I whipped up some beurre monte (for simplicity sakes, you can just used melted butter or clarified butter) and kept it at 175 degrees.  This ensures the lobster doesn't get over cook and is tender and buttery.  I poach the lobster in the beurre monte for a few minutes until its cooked.

To assemble the dish, I warm up the lobster broth, cook the orzo, add to the lobster broth, add a dollop of mascarpone cheese to make the 'macaroni' part of my dish.  I top it with my butter poached lobster and parmesan crisp.

Finally, our last course was a chocolate pot du creme.  This creation actually belonged to my wife K who got this recipe from the newest Iron Chef Zackerian while he was a guest on 'The Chew'.  It was rich, creamy and super chocolately. 

Hope you enjoyed the first post and be sure to come back for more.