Wonton Soup

The other night Nathan and I had wonton soup for dinner. There is no special story behind this except that I had never made wontons before and decided to have a go at it. They are actually super easy to make and quite fun. A lot of the asian ingredients in this recipe are heaps, heaps cheaper if you go to an Asian supermarket rather than a normal cater to everyone type supermarket. I completely stole this recipe from Donna Hay with the exception of my addition of chilli (I think chilli goes with everything!). So here is Donna's recipe (written my way which makes it heaps easier to follow the instructions!):

Ingredients ~

• 6 cups chicken stock
• 2 cups water
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 2 tbsp Chinese cooking wine
• 1 tbsp shredded ginger (just cut thinly with a knife - this works well)
• 250g bok choy, pak choy or similar, chopped
• 300g pork mince
• 2 shallots, chopped
• 2 tsp grated ginger
• 2 tbsp hoisin sauce
• 1/2 tsp sesame oil
• 1 tsp cornflour
• 1 tbsp water
• ~30 wonton wrappers
• chilli, finely sliced

To Cook ~

• Place the pork mince, spring onions, grated ginger, hoisin sauce and sesame oil in a small bowl and combine (with your hands works best).
• In a very small bowl combine the tbsp of water and the cornflour.
• To make the wontons take one wrapper and put 1 teaspoon of the pork mixture in the centre. Lightly brush (or dab with your fingers) some of the cornflour mixture along the sides of the wrapper. Then fold the wrapper in half, corner to corner to make a triangle. Press along the sides of the triangle to seal the wrapper. Now you are going to make many little folds back and forth along the edges (like gathering or pleating in sewing) to make it actually looks like a wonton. Once one edge has been pleated press it together to seal and then move onto the other open side of the wonton. 
• Repeat above with the remaining mixture and wrappers. 
• To make the soup place the stock, water, soy sauce cooking wine and ginger in a large saucepan (or two medium size ones if you don;t have one big enough like me!). Bring the mix to the boil and then reduce the heat. 
• Now you will cook the wontons in batches. First make sure that you have a slotted spoon or soup ladle to add and remove the wontons and a bowl to put the cooked wontons into. 
• place about 6 wontons in a saucepan at a time and cook for 3mins or until they rise to the surface. Continue until all wontons are cooked.
• When all the wontons are cooked return them to the pan and add the bok choy and cook until it is wilted. Serve with chilli on top :) 

mmm delicious!

we used choy sum in stead of bok choy

my cute little wontons