Winter wonton

It's no wonder why Philadelphia has seemingly come to a grinding halt...record snowfall - almost 27".  I somewhat prepared for this by stocking up on Girl Scout cookies to sell this weekend and making a trip to H-Mart on Thursday.  I planned to make pancit and wanted to take a stab at wonton soup. 

I have always loved the broth that forms the base of wonton soup - it's rare that I can eat a wonton because they are mostly filled with pork...there used to be a Chinese restaurant that had vegetable wontons, but they closed down sometime ago.  I also check for frozen wontons when I go to the H-Mart, but they all contain some sort of pork filling.  The only solution was to take matters into my own hands by making them myself.

I bought veggies, shrimp, noodles, and wonton wrappers...I also bought more soy sauce and oyster sauce...getting the oyster sauce was quite a task because most of it is actually made from anchovies and is loaded with various versions of MSG and corn syrup...I finally found one that had safe ingredients and bought that. 

I made London Broil and mixed greens for breakfast so that my husband could have some sustenance for his 12-hour shift today.  My sister wanted me to make Pina Coladas so we foolishly walked to the store for ice cream and pineapple juice - needless to say, the store was closed..when we returned, I made hot chocolate and then started thinking about the wonton soup. 

I decided to go with a procedure similar to preparing lumpia and naim.  I wanted to mix the shrimp with chicken breast but I didn't have any so I used the last of those frozen catfish fillets instead.  In a food processor I mixed shrimp, catfish, ginger, garlic, scallions, savoy cabbage, carrots - seasoned that with oyster sauce and added eggs to hold it together.  For the broth I used similar ingredients with the addition of celery. 

I recruited my daughter to help with the rolling and we tried several methods but none had the desired visual results, finally she developed a technique that produced just the wonton I was looking for...she and my nephew rolled until the pack was empty. 

I removed the tired looking green stuff from the broth, added the wontons, shrimp, and baby bok choi in 3 minute intervals, then topped with scallions...the soup is delicious, we ate bowl after bowl...I guess I'm making the pancit tomorrow.  Now I must pop some kernels for our movie marathon.