Last night my daughter wanted to make homemade won tons.
I bought the won ton wrappers at a noodle shop in Chinatown. They had such an assortment of won ton wrappers, from Hong Kong style (thinner) to local style, square, round, for boiling, for frying...... I ended up buying the local style square for boiling.
After I picked up my daughter from school, we went to the market. They didn't have any pork bones for broth, so I bought a whole pork shoulder and broke it down into different pieces for the soup.
First I cut most of the meat off of the bone. I managed to get a nicely shaped, fairly lean piece, which I boiled to make the kind of pork that the Japanese put into their ramen. I never really assign any kinds of time when I cook, I generally go by feel. This pork came out perfect - cooked nicely through, and very tender. It was also very easy to slice - sometimes when you boil meat too long, it shreds when you try to slice it, but this one sliced really thin.
The bone itself, along with the pork above, was boiled to make the broth. The boiling liquid consisted of dashi no moto, konbu and chicken stock.
There were several pieces of meat cut off the bone that were in odd shapes - which wouldn't have boiled well. This was perfect to throw into the food processor to make ground pork, which was the filling for the won tons. I added some salt, white pepper, Shao Xing cooking wine, oyster sauce, soy sauce, water chestnuts, and green onions. I taught my daughter how to wrap them, and in no time she made the entire package of something like 50 won tons!!
Look at the perfect shape! She is an iron chef in the making!!
Here's the finished product. It ended up being a bit of a hybrid between local style won ton min, and Japanese style ramen (with the pork slices) and beansprouts.
We ate a lot of saimin and won tons last night!!
