Home-wrapped wontons

Ingredientsserves 4

Method

1. Wash the prawn meat with a little salt, rinse, and dry it hard in a cloth; chop half, keep the rest whole. Chop the pork by hand until fine but not pasty.
2. Mix prawn, pork, egg yolk and seasoning and stir in one direction until sticky; chill half an hour.
3. Wrap: hold a wrapper in the cupped left hand, put a teaspoon of filling (one whole prawn's worth) in the centre, close the index, middle and ring fingers, then the little finger, then fold the thumb across, so the wrapper gathers and twists shut above the filling like a goldfish tail. Wet the edge only if the wrapper is dry. Line up on a floured tray.
4. Soup: blanch the pork bones, toast the dried flounder in a dry pan or oven until fragrant (scrape off any burnt edge, it turns bitter), toast the prawn shells until pink; simmer bones and flounder thirty minutes, add shells and dried shrimp and simmer an hour and a half more; strain and salt.
5. Cook: bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil, drop in the wontons, stir once, and when they float give them a minute more. The soup pot is never used for cooking them or it clouds; the Hong Kong rule is never one pot for both.
6. Put yellow chives and a pinch of white pepper in each bowl, lift the wontons in, and pour the hot soup over.
7. For wonton noodles: blanch thin egg noodles thirty seconds, rinse under the tap, return to the boiling water for ten seconds; wontons into the bowl first and the noodles on top, so the noodles sit above the soup and stay springy.
8. To freeze: freeze the wrapped wontons on the tray until hard, then bag; cook from frozen with a minute more.

Take care

• Contains prawn (crustacean), egg and wheat (the wrappers) and fish (dried flounder). The pork filling must be cooked through; give the wontons a minute after they float.

The story

The Cantonese wonton is the small bowl, four to a serving, wrapper thin as paper and a whole prawn inside. Wrapping wontons is a family afternoon around one table in Hong Kong: a hundred wrapped, twenty cooked, the rest laid out and frozen, and there is wonton soup on any night after that. The soup is dried flounder, pork bones and prawn shells, the base under every Mak Man Kee and Mak An Kee shop in the city.

Same technique

Home-rolled spring rolls

Lo Fo Tong is cultural food-heritage reference, not medical advice. If you are pregnant, unwell or on medication, talk to your doctor or registered practitioner before changing what is in the pot.