Wontons with friends!

Since I started this blog, I have not cooked for anyone but family.  Not sure why.  I guess I am nervous that people will think I am weird, that it would turn out bad, or the pressure of cooking for someone else made me nervous. Seriously, even at birthday parties for my kids I freak out a little bit that everything tastes good.  After I cooked my tofu from the last post, my really good friend came over and wanted to know what the smell was and why I didn't cook for them more.  Honestly, every time we get together we end up ordering pizza.  I decided after that, that I should relax and share my experience with them.  This one looked fun to try.  I started with canned chopped artichoke hearts.  This is a new staple for me in my pantry.  I have added it to rice, pasta, or salads and adds veggies with not much thought.  

I added bacon, feta cheese, salt and pepper and 1 egg.

While cooking for this particular friend, she offered to help.  If you do not know me, I am a huge control freak.  I am pretty much in high gear when I am cooking.  Because of this, my children rarely get to help me.  LOL.  I made a change and let her help me.  We started with wonton wrappers and placed 1 tsp of the mixture in the middle of the wrapper

We then used our finger with cold water and outlined the wrapper.  The point of this is to seal the wonton.

This recipe makes 35-40 wontons, so while we were assembling the wontons we kept the other ones on a wet towel.

Once they were all made, I turned the oven on 200 degrees to be able to keep them warm.  I placed 10 wontons into a med-high pan with 1 tsp on olive oil painted on the bottom of the pan.

After two minutes on one side, I flipped them.  They are very delicate so I ended up using a spatula instead of a fork.  Once then are flipped and then browned on the other side I added 1/4 cup of hot water to steam them.  After they were steamed for 1 minute I placed them into the oven and repeated the process.

Here are the finished products.

Overall, they turned out pretty good.  Symon loved them.  In the words of my mom, " I love cooking for Symon because he loves everything".  As for my guests they said they liked them as well.  Lets be honest, we decided the bacon made them. I felt some of them were greasy.  After we ate them, we decided that it could be good if we added some heat with jalepenos or a spicy sauce.  We also had some spicy chip dip that we ate with it.  It was good.  I suggested soy sauce or a sweet and sour sauce as well.
I really enjoyed cooking with friends.  After looking back.  I will be trying it again.  These two particular people were great sports and can't wait to cook again for and with them.

Is anyone else sick of Tofu experiments?

I just cringe every time I see tofu as one of the ingredients.  Literally I can hear my family complaint before I even put it on the table but here we are.  TOFU again.  Apparently, I will be trying every single cooking method with tofu until I can find the one that I can at least be able to swallow without gagging.  As before, I started with a block of tofu, drained it and then placed paper towels around it and then placed cans on top for 12 hours. This is to dry up all of the liquid, so the tofu can absorb the flavors that it will take on. 

We then create the "sauce" that the tofu will take on.  This is a sweet and sour tofu.  Ingredients include soy sauce, garlic, ginger, flour, and corn starch.  Into the fridge with the dried out tofu to marinate overnight.  I had horrible flashbacks from a prior recipe for peanut butter chicken made a couple of years ago.  The consistence of this marinate was so gross, but we digress.

At this point I would like to point out the ingredient list.  In my experience a ingredient list this long equals a lot of time and work for something not worth it.  Seriously,  I want to cook out of my kitchen pantry.

After the marinate part.  Here are the results.  Most of the liquid was gone.  It was really mushy looking which again freaks me out.

Onto the first "cooking" step.  This is the frying station.  Tofu, then flour and then my electric skillet with crisco melted.  I didn't have enough vegetable oil so I had to think what did my mom use.  I distinctly remember my Mom using crisco in her baby daddy frier.  It is a shout out to you Mom!

The cubes of tofu goes into the flour and then into the oil.  I love my electric skillet.  It takes the work out of frying because it keeps the oil at the perfect temperature.  Especially because I have an electric stove which makes it even harder.

Here is Symon testing the fried tofu.  He loved them. Now we make it into sweet and sour tofu.  I placed the fried tofu into the oven at 200 degrees to keep them warm.

I made my own sweet and sour sauce with ketchup, sugar, vinegar and honey.  It took ALOT of ketchup and I am not a fan.  I was a little grossed out at this point.

I diced up some veggies: bell peppers, carrots, onions and celery.

The veggies are saute' in a skillet at med/high heat with a little bit of oil.

Tossed with the tofu and then covered in sauce and let it come to a boil and then removed.  Here is the finishing product.

 I will be honest, it was definitely smelling like a chinese restaurant in the house.  The results were good, but not as good as many chinese restaurants I have eaten at.  The conclusion was that we liked the fried tofu plain as opposed to the whole dish.  As a side note, it was really gross the next day for left overs.