Recipe: Malaysian-style wonton mee

We weren't planning on posting recipes for a little while but we recently came across this gem of a recipe for making wontons and we had to share it!  

As we mentioned in our post on Perth's Noodle Forum, we had bought some egg noodles and wonton skins to bring back to Sydney with us, to savour the memories of Noodle Forum and to share with our family.  K then embarked on a mission to find a good wonton recipe so that the wonton skins did not go to waste...

We stumbled across a recipe on the website Christine's Recipes as well as Christine's helpful You Tube video on how to fold wontons.  The result?  Beautiful, fresh and healthy wontons that will now become a staple meal in our household. We've made them twice now and even in our first attempt, the wontons were amazing - it is a foolproof recipe, you can't go wrong! 

Don't they look happy all sitting there ready to be eaten?!!

K made a few adaptations to Christine's Recipe but even if you don't make these changes, it will still taste great. We also put together a "black sauce" (as the Malaysians/Singaporeans call it) and a garlic and chilli oil to make Malaysian-style egg noodles.  If you would prefer the Cantonese style, you can simply follow the recipe for the wontons and then serve the egg noodles in a chicken stock (cook the stock with prawn heads for extra flavour and cholesterol).  

Malaysian-style wonton mee
Note: this is adapted from a recipe at Christine's Recipes - please visit Christine's website as there are so many great recipes there!

Ingredients for wontons:

• 40-50 wonton wrappers (depending on how big your filling gets!) - we used Noodle Forum's spinach wonton skins in this post (hence the green colour)
• 150g lean minced pork 
• 200g fresh prawns - NB: Although it is more effort, I find it much better to peel and devine my own prawns than to buy peeled prawns.  To get about 200g of peeled prawns, you need to buy about double the amount (i.e. 400g of shelled prawns)
• 1/4-1/2 bunch of yellow chives - NB: yellow chives are a lot more fragrant than green chives.  We found them at our local Chinese supermarket but if you cannot find it, just use green chives

Seasoning for pork mince:

• 1 tsp soy sauce
• 1/2 tsp of sugar
• 1 tsp cornflour
• 1/2 tsp of oyster sauce 
• pinch of white pepper

Seasoning for prawns:

• 1/2 tsp of chicken powder
• 1 tbsp of egg white
• salt and pepper to taste 

Ingredients for egg noodles, sauce and vegetables

• Packet of fresh egg noodles
• 1/2 bunch of gai larn or another type of Chinese vegetables

For the garlic and chilli oil

• 4-5 tbsp of oil 
• 1/4 to 1/2 bulb of garlic - NB: C is OBSESSED with garlic so we always have more garlic in our food than what is specific in the recipe.  Feel free to use less if you are not a huge fan of garlic breath!
• 1 long red chilli 

For the black sauce (per serving)

• 1/2 tbsp of garlic and chilli oil (recipe above)
• 1/2 tbsp oyster sauce
• 1/2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1/2 tbsp dark caramel sauce - NB: make sure you use the "Cheong Chan Elephant Brand" dark caramel sauce.  You can buy this at any good Asian supermarket.

Method:

1. Marinate the minced pork with the seasoning listed above. 
2. Chop the yellow chives finely.
3. Peel and devein the prawns.  Christine recommends that you then run the prawns under cold tap water for 5-10 minutes to make the prawn meat crunchy.  I did this for about 5 minutes because I didn't want to waste too much water! Drain and pat the prawns dry with paper towels. Dice the prawns into 1.5cm cubes and mix with the seasoning listed above.  Cover and chill for 15 minutes.
4. Whilst the prawns are chilling, de-seed your chilli.  Roughly chop the garlic and chilli and place them in a small pot with the oil and bring it to a gentle simmer.  Don't boil it too strongly otherwise you will burn the oil.  Once the garlic turns a golden brown, take it off the stove and set aside (be careful, it is VERY hot). 
5. Mix the chilled prawn meat and chives in with the seasoned minced pork. Prepare a small bowl of water for wrapping the wontons. 
6. Place about one teaspoon of the filling in the centre of the wonton as shown below and fold the wontons using the method shown in Christine's You Tube video - click [here] for the link.  I find a visual guide much more useful than words when it comes to describing this procedure.  This method is super easy and results in consistently plump wontons!
7. Bring a pot of water to the boil in a saucepan and blanch the gai lan.  Set aside.  
8. (To save washing up another pot), place the wontons into the same boiling water after the gai lan is cooked.  Stir the water as you put the wontons in (sort of like what you would do to make a poached egg) so that the wontons don't stick to the bottom or to each other.  When the wontons float to the surface, they are cooked.  Remove from the water and set aside.
9. In a separate wok or saucepan, cook the egg noodles in boiling water.  If you are using fresh egg noodles, this will only take a very brief 30 seconds.  Cooking it for longer will make the noodles gluggy and unpleasant so avoid the temptation!  Immediately after cooking, rinse the egg noodles under cold water to stop the cooking process.  
10. Combine the ingredient for the black sauce and pour roughly 1 tbsp into the cooked egg noodles.  Stir to combine.  You can use less garlic oil or less black sauce if you prefer a milder taste.  
11. Place the cooked wontons on top of the noodles along with the vegetables.  Sprinkle some of the garlic from the garlic oil for an extra crunch!

The end result:

These wontons are perfect for freezing for a quick mid-week dinner.  All you have to do is place them into a container separating layers of them with some baking paper.  Don't put too many layers of the wontons on top of each other as you do not want them to deform whilst freezing - maybe 2 or 3 layers max! 

Once frozen, there is no need to defrost before cooking - just place them straight into boiling water and once floating, they are cooked.  

Enjoy!  If you have any questions or comments, please post them below :)