I thought I'd make some cream cheese based wontons
this year to bring to my Mom's house for Christmas
dinner. She usually makes everything, but I always
bring one thing, and this year one of my nieces
brought a huge birthday cake. (Mom turned 80 today.)

I had originally planned on three types of cream
cheese based filling: fried onion, sage, and
dill. The fried onion I make by frying fresh
yellow onion strips on low heat for hours with
frequent turning until crispy dark brown. I can
then grind them to a powder in a whirling blade
coffee grinder. For the dill and sage, I used
dried herbs, again ground to a powder in the mill.

I tried to mix the onion using a hand blender
but that didn't work at all because the cream
cheese was much too thick. What worked was
putting all the glop in a ziplock bag and
kneading the bag by hand. Similar treatment
for the sage and dill. I did all that yesterday,
with the plan of wrapping the wonton and frying
them today. (I've tried wrapping wonton a day
in advance, refrigerating them, and frying the
following day, and the results are not as good.)

Yesterday, after tasting the onion-based
cream cheese filling, I decided it was not so good.
I had bought four blocks of Philly, so I still
had one block available. I had intended to use
that block to dilute any filling which was too
concentrated, because sage and dill can easily
become objectionable if too strong. However,
despite the rather large amount I used, they
tasted just fine.

So, the backup block was available for a fourth
attempt. Hmmm . . . way too late to go out and
buy anything. What have I got? Black pepper?
No, white pepper might be a candidate, but I
don't have any. None of the spices from the ham
experiments came to mind as good possibilities.
Then I remembered that block of imported Pecorino
Romano sheep's milk cheese I have. That's a very
strong cheese, which could set off the blandness
of the Philly quite nicely.

It did. I ground the cheese with the mini food
processor attachment for my Braun hand mixer.
That worked well, but then attempting to work
in the cream cheese with the same machine was
only partly successful. That one was also
finished by kneading in a ziplock bag.

This morning, I got up early and wrapped over
five dozen wontons. For the first time, I used
the trick of cutting off a corner of the ziplock
bag and piping out the flavored cream cheese
onto the wonton wrappers. That worked great.
I was making excellent progress, well ahead
of schedule. I'm so smart!

Then, I heated up the oil. I had two wontons
made with the failed onion experiment, which
I used as test vehicles for the oil. They
began alright, but before reaching proper
color, they began leaking and contaminating
the oil. I poured off the oil into another
pot, cleaned the first pot, put it back on
the burner at a lower temperature, and decanted
the oil from the second pot back into the first
pot.

I tried frying (more slowly, at the lower
temperature) some sage wontons, and they burst,
too. All of them. I tried some of the Romano
wontons, and they also burst.

Darn! Why is this happening? I had made
wontons with cream cheese filling before, and
they turned out perfect! My post mortem analysis
is that those perfect ones were made with salmon,
and probably were only about 1/3 cream cheese.
Apparently, near-100% cream cheese is not a
suitable filling. Also, I may have erred by
filling the wontons to near capacity. If I
had been more stingy with the filling, they
might have puffed up without bursting.

I salvaged the dill and Romano fillings by
unwrapping the wontons and putting the fillings
in tubs. That's what I gave Mom, and she liked
them, but it wasn't nearly the spectacular dish
I had intended.

This was a dry run for a New Year's Day party
I'm invited to. Good thing I didn't wait
until then. But now I have to formulate new
plans for the filling. I think a dill type and
a Romano type are still good ideas, but with
something else for a matrix. If there were
such a thing as dry cream cheese, I'd use that,
but there isn't. Part of the reason for using
cream cheese is that it sets up into a nice
caky texture when cooked. The only other
material I know that does that is avocado.

So I'm stuck. I've only got a few days to work
out a solution and get it into testing prior
to the deadline. I could always fall back on
a more conventional wonton recipe, but that
would not be the unique, unconventional dish
I wish to bring. Any suggestions?

Janet wrote:
>
> My favorite filling is curried chicken, but almost anything
> is great. Goat cheese mixed with various things is delicious,
> so cream cheese fillings ought to be good.

Yes, goat cheese and dill would be good for
the first kind, with cream cheese and Romano
for the second kind.

I've solved the problem of filling leakage.
I used the remaining rejected onion cream cheese
with the last of the wonton skins to make an
experimental batch to test the theory that
I simply used too much filling.

I piped a bead of filling the same length as
before, about an inch and a half long, with
a much smaller tip. The bead was about the
diameter of a pencil.

I just fried up 15 of them, and not one leaked
any filling.

It's been so many years since I made wontons,
I guess I've forgotten a lot. Like all the
individual movements in wrapping one. I knew
basically how they needed to be wrapped, but
I'd forgotten the technique for wrapping it
around my thumb, so they can be made at high
speed with every one exactly the same. I've
now relearned the nuances of the technique,
even such subtlies as which end of the wonton
is set down on the wax paper when they are
set out to dry a little before frying.

However, the cheesecake texture did not appear.
With such a small amount of filling, it was
mostly empty space inside the wonton. All of
the filling was coating the inside wall of the
wrapper. That's not what I was shooting for,
though it could be an acceptable result.
It is the crunch of the wrapper which is the
important texture.

On Dec 25, 7:23 pm, Mark Thorson > wrote:
> I thought I'd make some cream cheese based wontons
> this year to bring to my Mom's house for Christmas
> dinner.

I thought that it was Jewish people who ate Chinese food on Christmas
Day.

--Bryan

Bobo Bonobo® wrote:
>
> On Dec 25, 7:23 pm, Mark Thorson > wrote:
> > I thought I'd make some cream cheese based wontons
> > this year to bring to my Mom's house for Christmas
> > dinner.
>
> I thought that it was Jewish people who ate Chinese food
> on Christmas Day.

Mom was born on Kauai.

"Mark Thorson" > ha scritto nel messaggio
...
>I thought I'd make some cream cheese based wontons
> this year to bring to my Mom's house for Christmas
> dinner.

> So I'm stuck. I've only got a few days to work
> out a solution and get it into testing prior
> to the deadline. I could always fall back on
> a more conventional wonton recipe, but that
> would not be the unique, unconventional dish
> I wish to bring. Any suggestions?

Since you are talking about a differently ethnicized ravioli, I say try
ricotta, recipes freely available on the net, add flavorings as you will.
We fry ravioli, and it is possible to burst one, but perhaps less likely.
And yes, do not overfill them. A dab will do. A trial can also be boiling
samples before moving on to oil.
-
http://www.judithgreenwood.com

Mark Thorson wrote:

>
> So I'm stuck. I've only got a few days to work
> out a solution and get it into testing prior
> to the deadline. I could always fall back on
> a more conventional wonton recipe, but that
> would not be the unique, unconventional dish
> I wish to bring. Any suggestions?

The first thing that came to mind was to add an
egg yolk or two to the mixture to help it set up
firmer. Would pot cheese or ricotta work?

gloria p

Puester wrote:
>
> Mark Thorson wrote:
>
> > So I'm stuck. I've only got a few days to work
> > out a solution and get it into testing prior
> > to the deadline. I could always fall back on
> > a more conventional wonton recipe, but that
> > would not be the unique, unconventional dish
> > I wish to bring. Any suggestions?
>
> The first thing that came to mind was to add an
> egg yolk or two to the mixture to help it set up
> firmer. Would pot cheese or ricotta work?

The basic problem seems to be moisture content,
turning into steam, then bursting the wrapper.
I don't see how adding an egg would help that.
And I certainly don't think adding marijuana
would be a good idea -- it's not that kind of
part.

Mark, I am puzzled about what went wrong. I suspect the wontons had too
much filling. I have used 99% cream cheese, with some herbs, and they
came out fine. I have also mixed cream cheese and crab.

You did wet the edges of the wontons to make them stick together? I am
sure you did, but I had to ask anyway. ;-)

Better luck next time.

Happy birthday to your Mom.

Becca

Becca wrote:
>
> Mark, I am puzzled about what went wrong. I suspect the wontons had too
> much filling. I have used 99% cream cheese, with some herbs, and they
> came out fine. I have also mixed cream cheese and crab.

Do tell!

> You did wet the edges of the wontons to make them stick together? I am
> sure you did, but I had to ask anyway. ;-)

Yes, and I fried them in vegetable oil,
not motor oil. :-)