DC1346
Well-Known Member
At Mia's suggestion, I have started this food thread to discuss all things food related. I'll start.
For dinner this evening I enjoyed a won-ton soup. I used store bought won-ton wrappers and stuffed them with ground pork that I mixed with diced shrimp, a beaten egg, and some minced ginger and garlic. Although won-ton dumplings may be cooked in a soup, I prefer to steam them because I find they hold together better if they're steamed instead of boiled. Boiling can make the noodles too tender to the point where they start falling apart. If you steam them first, you may add them to a soup later and they're much more durable.
I made a simple broth using instant dashi. Dashi is a cornerstone of the Japanese culinary arts and it's made with water, kombu (dried kelp), and bonito fish flakes. The resulting clear broth is delicious and I added some vegetables to it along along with a dash of soy sauce.
If I was plating this for a restaurant, I would have strained the broth to eliminate tiny food particles. A garnish of shrimp or imitation crab legs would have added some additional texture and color.
Pictured below is a vegan won-ton soup that I made. Since vegans don't use animal products (including eggs), the pasta was made using nothing more than organic all purpose flour mixed with water which I rolled flat prior to running it through a pasta roller that made it even more flat. I then cut rounds with a biscuit cutter and used a textured vegetable protein with chopped water chestnuts, mushroom, ginger, onion, and garlic filling to stuff the pasta. After steaming the dumplings, I served them in a mushroom-ginger broth.
I like won-ton dumplings because they're pretty versatile. You can boil them or steam them. You may also deep fry them. Here is a picture of some deep fried won-ton that I paired with a ginger-honey-mustard dipping sauce.
The dashi that I used in this evening soup was fun to work with. Here's a picture of some dashi that I made using watercress from my pond when I lived in Arizona. In addition to the water cress, I used onions, carrots, shitake mushrooms, and cubes of bean curd.
I enjoyed this simple meal with nothing more than another bowl of steamed white rice. Although my parents frowned on this practice as a child (saying that I had no table manners), I enjoyed scooping up a mound of rice on a soup spoon and then dipping it into the dashi so that the grains of rice could absorb the wonderful flavor.
It was DELICIOUS!
