Fried Vegetable Wontons with Red Pepper Salad

Have you missed me? I definitely missed all of you and sharing my food adventures with you. I guess I haven't done too much cooking this week.

Today at work I was thinking about making mushroom stuffed wontons. Hilariously, when I came home, Anna was sauteing a mixture of mushrooms, ginger, garlic, onion, carrots and cabbage: we are so on the same wavelength.

To go along with the wontons I made a quick red pepper salad with soy sauce, sesame seed oil, mirin, cilantro and toasted sesame seeds.

Ingredients for wontons
mushrooms, finely chopped
ginger, minced
garlic, minced
onion, finely chopped
cabbage, shredded
carrot, shredded
seasoning: salt, pepper, soy sauce
store-bought wonton wrappers
vegetable oil

Ingredients for the Red Pepper Salad:
Red bell pepper, thinly sliced
cilantro, chopped
seasoning: soy sauce, sesame seed oil, mirin, cilantro

As far as the amounts: you just have to wing it!

Directions
1. In a pan saute mushrooms, onion, garlic and ginger. Once everything is pretty well cooked and the moisture has evaporated, add carrots and cabbage. Saute for a few minutes. Let the mixture cool slightly.
2. Take one wonton wrapper. Put it on a plate. Put a small amount of the filling in the center.



3. Dip your finger in a bit of water and "draw a border" on the inside of the wonton wrapper. Fold the wrapper in half, pressing the seams. For a fun little twist, crimp the edges.




5. Pour enough oil to cover the bottom of a pan by about a quarter of an inch. Fry wontons for about 1.5 minutes on each side. Remove them from the pan and let them rest on a paper towel to soak in the extra oil.

6. For the salad, combine all the ingredients together.

This was such a satisfactory dinner! The vegetables inside the wontons and the salad almost make you feel like you are eating something healthy: not quite true since the wontons are fried!!!

You can obviously have a dipping sauce to go along with this dish, but the filling came out a bit on a salty side, so there was no need for extra soy sauce.

For extra suggestions, check out my earlier post for Asian Chicken Dumplings.