BKaF - Brad Kovach and Friends

One of the things I miss most when I’m home for the summer is Chinese and Japanese food. A favorite restaurant in my college town serves crab-and-cheese wontons as an appetizer, and one day I just missed those little fried bits of heaven so much that I was determined to make my own. If you’d like to give it a try, read on!

The essential ingredients are cream cheese, wonton wrappers, and an egg beaten in a bowl.

Luckily, once you get the wonton wrappers (packs of 40+ available at grocery stores for $1-$2), you can put pretty much whatever you want in there. Use a cream cheese base and see what other Chinese-type supplements you have in your kitchen. My favorite ingredients are cream cheese, ginger, parsley, scallions, and other spices/herbs. My pantry was a little empty this time, so I went with the following:

• A little less than half a package of cream cheese
• Half a container of Garden Vegetable flavor cream cheese

Dashes of:

• Ground ginger
• Minced garlic
• Parsley

This amount of cheese will give me about 25 wontons.

Some people like putting meat in their filling (i.e., crab or pork), but I can’t stand seafood unless it’s out-of-the-water fresh, so I skipped that.

Blend your base together with the dry ingredients. A pastry blender would be great for this, but a fork works. Try to get the mixture as even as possible. If you find you’ve added more spice than you wanted, just put in some more cheese to dilute it.

Get ready to fold! This process takes a while until you get into the groove of it. Get out a pastry brush to spread egg on your wonton wrappers, a plate to hold folded wontons, and a couple spoons to dish out the mixture without getting your hands sticky.

Now onto the folding.

Fold in half again. Dab one more bit of egg in the raised center.

Curl the empty ends of the wonton in on itself and curl the tips outward.

Fill and fold until you’re out of filling. You can refrigerate these for a while under plastic wrap if you want to fry them later–or you can jump right to the oven. For this part, you’ll need:

• Enough vegetable or Canola oil to cover the wontons in the pan
• A plate with a paper towel (to drain)
• Slotted metal spoon (the longer the better)
• Small but deep saucepan

Turn the heat up to medium high. You want to get the oil heated up to 275 degrees, but you can start dropping the wontons in when it hits 250. Put in enough at a time to cover the bottom of the pan, and that’s it. (Keep an eye on the temperature and adjust the heat when it starts getting too high or low. Also point the handle of the pan away from you so you don’t knock it over and cause some horrible hot oil accident).

Those suckers are noisy. Keep a close eye on them and turn them over, stir them, etc. with your spoon to make sure they’re getting brown and crispy on the edges. Watch out, they spit hot oil.

When they look less pale and more crispy golden brown, spoon them onto the plate to drain. Once they’re all out, put the next batch in. Depending on how many wontons you’re making, you may have to do more than two rounds.*

These are best served right out of the pan (possibly with some sweet and sour sauce), but give ‘em a few minutes to cool before eating. They’re also not that bad microwaved!

Enjoy experimenting with ingredients!

*If you want to save the oil for other cooking projects, wait for it to be completely cooled. Line a funnel with a strong paper towel and pour the oil through it into a container.