Wonton-ing

So thought I might share some of my cooking adventures.  First off, I love to cook.  I find it relaxing (ironic, I know) and rewarding, and, I just love food.  Mostly I cook in the Rachael Ray style, I really appreciate  her approach to cooking that involves very little measuring and encouraging to make it your own.  Plus most of her recipes use basic foods (not a lot of processed mixes, etc.) and are pretty easy.  That being said I thought I would stretch my comfort zone a little.  I asked for this cook book for Christmas after seeing him on the (surprise) Rachael Ray Show demo-ing some of the recipes, plus I liked the concept:  

 (Ignore the "click to look inside", just a photo from Amazon)

Many of the recipes in here are the "classics" made the classic way, and there are some scary recipes that call for things like oxtails and rabbit, I may be brave in the kitchen but not that brave.  So anyway, there was a recipe for wonton soup, which I LOVE.  It was a bit time consuming but I was very pleased with the outcome.  It started by steeping the broth for about an hour in just mushroom stems and scallions.  I thought this was a little much but it really did make a difference to the taste.  Then came the fun part, wonton making! I must confess that it was not entirely from scratch as I cheated and bought wonton wrappers, I don't think I have the patience to roll dough that thin.  The filling was a pork and shrimp base, then I got to wontoning!  If you ever find yourself making wontons, the trick is to have a dry surface but a small bowl of water nearby, wet your fingers and trace around whichever edge you are sealing, it was like magic.

  Aren't they PRETTY?!!  I think I squealed like a little girl when they where done, Eric though I had lost it getting so excited about my own food, but, hey, they were hard work!  From this point it was smooth sailing, just combining all the veggies (which there were a lot: snap peas, napa cabbage, carrots, mushrooms, to name a few) with the broth and it turned out sooo much better than anything I have had from a Chinese restaurant.   

 It makes my mouth water just thinking about it again.  The only downside I saw to this recipe was that the wontons got a little soggy and fell apart in the leftovers.  I think next time I will freeze the uncooked wontons separately from the broth and make the soup on different days, or just invite over some friends!