Wonton-tastic

Today we have another winner.

The Light the Night Walk was pretty much rained out, so Dave and I stayed in with Diane and Rob and made some Better Homes & Gardens recipes: Cheese-Wine Log and Chicken & Crab Wontons.

To make the cheese-wine log, you mix cream cheese, shredded sharp cheddar cheese, dry white wine, scallions, and horseradish. It sounds like a strange mixture, but it really was tangy and delicious. You could also taste the wine more than I expected.

After you do all that, you chill the mixture and roll it in "snipped smoked beef." I didn't really know what that was or where to buy it, so I bought some roast beef lunch meat and Diane shredded it. Here's the end product:


It looks like a strange furry little thing, but it was good, trust me.

Admittedly, the Chicken & Crab Wontons were highly anticipated members of my list for the appetizers section of the Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook. They did not disappoint.

The wontons are stuffed with chicken, crab, and various asian sundries, such as Chinese (Napa) cabbage, pea pods, water chestnuts, soy sauce, etc. Normally I do not like the taste of some of these things in stir fry dishes, but chopped finely in these egg rolls they were delicious.

First you chop and sautee all those ingredients together. Then you let it cool a little bit and start making little wontons out of them with dough wrappers. We made two types of rolls, mini wontons and eggroll-style wraps. They made enough for the four of us very easily.


I was the wrapper, Diane was the fryer. (Look at us, all decked out in our aprons.)

We also made two sauces recommended by the book: Hot Chinese Mustard and Sweet-Sour Sauce.

The mustard was kind of like this, except the ingredients were basically only water, dry mustard, oil, and salt. It was a little too spicy and most of us didn't care for it - at least not nearly as much as the other sauce.

The Sweet-Sour Sauce, on the other hand, was mild and delicious. Both were easy to make.

The wontons were delicious and probably my favorite thing that I have made in this entire project so far. They were completely new to me, and a neat way to serve up any type of meat or veggie. I could even see making turkey-avocado wontons. Mmm. I got a recipe from the package for crab rangoon wontons, so I might have to hit that up.

Above: Yellow sauce is the mustard sauce, dark sauce is the sweet-sour one

Anyway, home run for the wontons, and the cheese log, too. What a spread. (P.S. The dip next to the veggie tray is the creamy dill dip from a few posts back.

It was also really fun to have a friend over to help me make recipes for the project, so I will have to do more of that, especially with Diane, who did such a bang-up job with me on the wontons!

Finally, I should note that we had plans to make three: the first two and Broiled Grapefruit. By the end, we were so satiated and happy that we couldn't muster the strength to do the grapefruit. However, I have the grapefruit ready, so we will have to do that tomorrow.