Wonton-Off!

For the most part our meal was pretty simple tonight. We just got back from out of town and are operating on about 4 hours of sleep. The one exciting element is the WONTON COOK-OFF! (To be clear, my boyfriend still did most of the execution, so this was really only a "cook-off" in terms of ideas...a "concept-off", if you will...)

My boyfriend's filling:

ricotta cheese, bacon, green onion and cilantro

Two of these wontons also contained sriracha, although the difference was undetectable in the finished product.

My filling:

pork, green apple and fennel with cinnamon and either coriander or nutmeg

Although I am sure that we had five-spice (I went through a phase where I was obsessed with the concept of five-spice and cilantro chicken burgers, although I'm not sure I ever made them), the five-spice conveniently went missing when my boyfriend and I decided to compete. So to substitute I used cinnamon and nutmeg in two of the wontons and cinnamon and coriander in the other two. Ultimately, like the sriracha, we couldn't taste the difference.

The Winner: ME!!!!

Despite the disappearance of the five-spice and the fact that my wontons also mysteriously got slightly over-fried by a certain competitor/head chef), we both agreed that my wonton concept was today's winner, and we'll probably make those ones again.

Other wonton mishaps: I'm fairly proud of the way they photographed, but, as Alton Brown did warn me, wonton wrappers need to be rolled immediately. That is, they can't sit around under the hot lights of a photo shoot because they will get dry and hard and will ultimately break when dumpling-forming is attempted. So we actually had to toss out the 8 wonton wrappers pictured here. They did not fulfill their wonton-wrapper destiny, but at least they will be immortalized on the blog.

The complete meal:

Wontons

Chunky parsnip puree with grated parmesean (unfortunately a bit of a fail: the chunks caused the parsnip puree to lose it's characteristic silkiness - which might deserve a big ol' DUH! - and the cheese ultimately made it too salty)

Sauteed spinach and arugula

Seared beef round steak