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Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Single Serving: Food as Therapy

I recently read this convo on Serious Eats about how people like to spend a night in making time consuming or labor intensive recipes as a way to relax and unwind. Most of my meals aren't labor intensive, but if I do have time I will occasionally use it laboring over something that I can make a lot of and put in my freezer for a rainy day- a great "Single Serving" tip. It can be almost theraputic with you're favorite tv show on or some music. Many people mention a glass of wine, but I'm not so sure about that. I don't think me, alcohol and knives are a good combination.

I had bought some wonton wrappers on a whim at the grocery store. I'd always been curious and threw them in my freezer where they sat for some time while I pondered their many uses. With some extra tofu on hand I set out to make vegetable dumplings. I ended up with a ton of filling and a surprising number of wonton wrappers to fill so I spent the better part of the evening making them.

Ingredients
Tofu- extra firm and pressed to remove the liquid
Cabbage
Carrot
Garlic
Mushrooms
Ginger
Soy sauce
Sesame oil and vegetable oil
Wonton wrappers, thawed

Slice your tofu and all your vegetables into very small pieces. You want everything chopped up pretty fine. Sautee them in vegetable oil and add a splash of sesame oil and soy sauce. Season with pepper but go easy on the salt because soy sauce has plenty. After the vegetables have started to soften add the ginger and garlic. Let simmer on low heat for about 5 minutes which will allow most of the liquid to evaporate.

Once it's dry it's just a matter of filling the wonton wrappers. It will take some practice to figure out the right amount in each dumpling. Have a small bowl of water to moisten the edges when you seal them. I sealed them corner to corner to make triangles, but there are variations. Keep what you want to eat immediately aside, but layer the rest in a freezable container for later.

You can steam them in a bamboo steamer which I intend to try, but I pan fried them and dipped them in hoisin sauce. Not bad for my first attempt.

1 comment:

  1. Well the butternut squash ravioli sound very good. Nice filling and at least you didn't try to make the pasta part from scratch as I did once a long time ago. Wonton wrappersm may be temperamental but at least you don't need to roll them out. Bet the filling would be good in lasagna as well. rpkc

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