Shrimp Wontons

Another classic dish from my home town. Adding some minced and roughly chopped shrimp into the pork filling gives this dish an elegant upgrade on both flavor and texture. Of course, I served it with my signature spicy sauce. Life is good!

Ingredients:

1 package of store bought thin wonton wrappers. Don’t buy the thick type for this dish. The thin type will be super soft and silky after cooking process and you taste buds will be focused on the filling and the sauce.

1/2 lb ground pork, I prefer the fattier type, if pork is too lean, the filling tends to be a bit tougher after cooking

16 medium sized shrimp, half roughly chopped, half minced.

2 green onions, thinly sliced

1 knob of ginger, about 1/2 inch, minced

1 lemon grass stalk, about 4 inches long rough outer layers removed, ends removed, minced

1 egg

1 TBSP corn starch

1 tsp salt

1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

1/2 cup water

Method:

Put all ingredients except for wonton wrappers into a large bowl.

Stir vigorously with a pair of chopsticks or a fork in one direction for about 5 minutes. The mixture will change texture to be a lot more smoother, but you can still see the chopped shrimp pieces.

Line up the work station with wonton filling, wonton wrappers and a tray. Put a small bowl of water nearby for sealing the wrappers.

Grab a piece of wonton wrappers flat on your left palm, put about 1 tsp filling in the center.

Fold the top half over the bottom half to enclose the filling, slightly offset a bit.

Keep the filling meatball around middle finger area, slightly lift middle finger to push meatball upwards, while use thumb and pinkie to keep the two sides down.

Dab a little bit of water onto the left corner, under the thumb. Bring the right corner over to the left corner and squeeze it on top of the left corner. Retract middle finger while doing that. Viola, you just made a authentic wonton.

Keep repeating the process until you exhaust either the wrappers or the filling. I tend to make slightly more filling than wrappers, just because the fillings can be easily turned into meatballs or be incorporated into some other dishes, while leftover wrappers, you really don’t have much other use for them, and they tend to dry out very fast.

Now it’s time to cook these bad boys and enjoy them.

Boil a large pot of water on high heat. In the mean time, make your sauces in a large bowl. You want to be able to mix the wontons in the spicy sauce when they are done.

Once water is boiling, carefully put in about 15 to 20 wontons per adult serving into the water, don’t over crowd them. Move wontons gently with the back of a slotted spoon. Bring the water back to a boil.

Let fresh wontons boil with lid off for about 5 minutes. They will float up to the surface once they are done.

Spoon the wontons directly into your sauce bowl, mix well and enjoy!