Steamed Stuffed Won Ton

From Thai Vegetarian Cooking, Vatcharin Bhumichitr, Pavilion, 1991.

I really wanted to succeed with making won ton and I felt sure that with this book I would probably not go wrong. So far, all that I have made from Thai Vegetarian Cooking has been a success.

It was not difficult making the filling. Boiling an egg and chopping the white couldn’t be easier.  Making a paste in the mortar and pestle with coriander roots and peppercorns no problem. Frying some garlic in oil to make a garlic oil was pretty basic.  Chopping and mixing the final ingredients: bamboo shoots, water chestnuts and onion, and some bindings like flour and egg white, together with flavourings like soy sauce, sugar and the paste was the most difficult process so far.

It was filling the won tons and making them into the required shape where I fell down. The instructions were not completely clear in that it just said to gather the edges together and crimp them to form a money bag. I tried to close the bags tight which apparently was not what was required. They would not stay closed. The bags would not hold together. I have a feeling that I did not get the filling satisfactorily sticky to hold the pastry. After a lot of squeezing and binning of a few, some cursing and complaining, I had enough to put in the steamer.

They were all right, I suppose, but they weren’t right. They had a nice crunch and the flavour was not too bad, but they looked wrong.

I have since been shown what they should have been. The money bag is left open rather than closed tightly.

I might have another try at a later time, perhaps from a different recipe.  

                                                                                                                         

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔