Wontons and Mini Quiche

Alright! Today we're making wontons (or Jiǎozi as they're properly known. Actually what we're cooking are Gyōza, the Japanese version, because we're using garlic and such, but the wrappers should be thinner if we're going Japenese authentic. I get geeky about this stuff. Let's just call them wontons.)  and using the leftover gunk to make mini quiches, the best kind of quiches. 

Wonton preparation takes a while, so be sure to make an absolutely massive batch. Use the wontons in soups (boiled ones only) salads, lunch boxes over rice and for dipping in soy sauce or sweet chilli sauce.

Ingredients:

Happy little package of convenience!

• Three turkey breasts (or equivalent in just about any light meat)
• Three spring onions
• A cup of chopped bacon bits or cured ham if you're fancy (to counteract the healthy blandness of the turkey)
• One tablespoon oyster sauce
• 1tsp crushed garlic
• 1 tsp crushed (and chopped) chilli
• Wonton wrappers from the local asian supermarket 
• Look, I know you can make your own. I've done it. But these ones come in a lovely little packet and don't make a mess. If you really want to, it's just flour (preferably rice flour) and water. Go wild.
• 2 eggs (one for the mixture, one for sealing the wontons)

Extra ingredients for the quiche:

• Plain flour
• Some kind of butter, stork or (at a push) animal fat
• Another egg. I sure do love cholesterol in my cooking

Method:

1. Prepare wonton filling

1. Cut the meat like it owes you money. Seriously, as finely as you possibly can. It should look disgracefully not-meat-like by the end. If you have big lumps, they will make your wontons burst while cooking, and then that mix will stick to other wontons so even the successful wontons will remind you of your past failures
2. Chop the spring onions finely and add to the bowl, season with salt and pepper
3. Add 2 teaspoons of crushed garlic and 2 of crushed chilli, according to taste, and 1 tablespoon of oyster sauce. If you don't have oyster sauce, mix a tablespoon of soy sauce with a pinch of sugar and enough cornstarch to form the consistency of tomato ketchup, and add that
2. Wontons, Assemble!





Prussian Efficiency

1. Assemble in batches. Put a teaspoon of filling in the middle of the wonton wrapper
2. Beat an egg in a seperate dish and smear it around the outside with your finger while trying to take pictures/use a pastry brush like a responsible adult
3. Fold in half and crimp the edges. Here are three pictures of valid ways of crimping the edges. The one with the fork most shouts "White girl cooking Chinese food" so that's what I generally go with. Also it reminds me of delicious pies

   

   Words can't bring them down, oh no no.



3. Cook wontons

1. Fill a kettle with boiling water and add a splash of soy sauce to help with flavour
2. Lower wontons in carefully with a slotted spoon
3. Boil them until the last wonton has risen to the top of the pan (Protip: Lay a wooden spoon over the pan to stop thing accidentally boiling over. If you work on gas, make sure to line it up with the handle of your pan or you'll burn it and everyone will laugh at your foolish error)
4. Drain in a colander

This is how I like my wontons:
Pure and delicious, almost healthy

This is how my little sister likes hers.
All you have to do is pan fry after boiling-
gives them a nice crispy skin, for easier
dipping

Great! You've got wontons! And a whole bowl of wonton mixture left over! Fortunately, wonton mixture is basically the same as quiche mixture. If you're very foreign and don't know what a quiche is, it's an omelette pie. Am I making this sound glamorous? Quiche is manly, let's go.

Preheat the oven to 190C (374F), add the rest of the egg you used to seal the wontons to the bowl of slop and quickly knock up some short crust pastry:

Rolling pins are for losers
(this recipe only)

1. Guesstimate the volume of pastry you want and put about half as much flour as that in a bowl. It's better to be over than under. Also add a generous pinch of cayenne pepper- this makes cracking pastry
2. Add half as much fat as there is flour (stork or butter is best-- steer clear of anything that claims to be healthy) and rub in with your fingertips until it looks like breadcrumbs
3. Crack and egg in and form into a ball with your hands. Sloppy? Add more flour until it resembles what you think pastry looks like

Spray your muffin tin with oil spray (or grease with butter and some kitchen towel). Now rip the pastry into balls, flatten with your fingers and line the muffin tin with them

Slop the mixture in each one, sprinkle grated cheddar delicately on top and whack them in the oven until the cheese starts going brown where it's spilled over on the muffin tin. Also it should smell like Cheese On Toast (Americans, I believe you have something called a "grilled cheese". Use that as guidance)

Smells like the dishonour of a filthy
muffin tin

Smells like the glory that is Cheese On
Toast

Cool on a cooling rack and chow down.

Quiche just doesn't look good in photos.
Trust me that this is delicious.
I think it's the arbitrary bits of spring onion
that really make it sparkle.

NB: Both these things are amazing in bentos (lunchboxes). The quiches can be just wrapped up in tin foil and eaten as a hearty mid-morning snack. Go crazy.

Chicken and Carrot pie with White Wine Sauce

Takes:  About 50 minutes

Ingredient	Cost	Notes
3 cups flour	10p
1 cup cooking margarine eg. Stork	30p	Butter works well too, but don’t attempt with anything healthy. Blue Flora in particular won’t cook right. If it claims to in any way be good for your heart, you probably shouldn’t be eating pie anyway
2 eggs	35p	One for pastry, one for egg wash
2 chicken breasts	£2.00	If you’re using funky chicken, scrape any slime/discolouration off first, and fry for an extra five minutes. Classy
3 onions	30p
1 cup corn flour	5p
1.5 cups white wine	40p	Plus at least one for the chef. Don’t be fancy here, get out your boxed stuff
4 carrots	25p
1 tub sour cream	£1.00	Tasty stuff, but you could try using cream or even yoghurt

Total: £4.75
or £1.19 per person

Method:

1. Pastry
   
   
   • Pre-heat your oven to 200C because we are lazy and cannot wait for slow cooking
   • Blend the flour, butter and 1 egg together with a little salt and pepper (alternatively, rub in the butter with your fingers and then add the egg to amalgamate)
   • Knead lightly until it forms a ball
   • Separate a third for the lid. Roll the rest out to cover the inside of the pie dish- make sure it spills over the edge a bit- it’s going to shrink back anyway
   • Prick with fork, egg wash and blind bake for about 15 minutes. Prepare everything else now
     
     

     

     Still dangerous, obviously

2. Prepare pie innards
   
   
   • Peel and chop carrots and boil for 15 minutes on a medium heat
     
     
   • Chop onions and chicken and fry until chicken no longer looks dangerous
     
     
   • Drain carrots- put a small bowl under the colander to collect carroty water
     
     
   • Put drained carrots in with chicken and onions and take the whole thing off the heat
     
     
     
     
3. Pie sauce
   • Create cornflour slop with 3 tablespoons cornflour mixed with 3 tablespoons white wine
   • Pour into chicken pan
   • Add more white wine and carrot water until sauce forms- you may need to put the cornflour back on the heat in order to activate its incredible propensity for forming terrifying glutinous lumps around your chicken. When this happens, add more liquid
   • When a reasonable but boring looking sauce has formed, add a tub of sour cream
   • Stir and season thoroughly, then slop in blind-baked pie dish (suddenly remember you had a blind-baked pie dish in the oven…)
     
     
     
     
4. Lid
   
   
   • Roll out last third of pastry, cut into an appropriate lid-shape and slice an “X” in the middle to let steam out
   • Have your boyfriend or anyone who is supposedly cooking with you mould the remaining pastry into a retarded version of the animal inside the pie
   • Cut the excess pastry off the sides of the pie dish
   • Brush the linking edges with egg wash
   • Flop the lid on top, push a fork down on the sides to make it pretty and egg wash the whole thing (don’t forget to add the somewhat confused animal or your sous chef will cry)
   • Bake for about 20 minutes or until brown/extreme hunger
     
     

     

     Squirrel? Chicken? 

     
     

     

     Now, cooked!

5. Plate up
   
   
   • Pie can be a meal in itself, but I’m serving mine with mashed potato and fancy broccoli because FUCK THE POLICE
   • Chow down
     
     

     

     Mash and broccoli, because there weren't enough carbohydrates on this plate

     
     

     

     Appropriately dressed for dinner