Recipe: Crab Rangoon

My mom's been craving Chinese food lately, so deciding on tonight's dinner of beef with broccoli and snow peas was very easy. I'd yet to try out my deep fryer, so I decided this meal would pair up perfectly with fried crab rangoon, those deliciously golden-brown wonton pockets filled with cream cheese, flaky crab meat, and green onion. They're easy to make, and any excess filling can be stored in an airtight container in the fridge for a few days. Now, it's important to understand that I used a deep fryer to make these. You can fry foods without a fryer, typically by heating oil in a pot on the stove while carefully monitoring the temperature (I've done it before—it's a little terrifying and you have to be incredibly careful), and you can also do no-fry methods by utilizing some sort of fat (butter, cooking spray, etc.) and an oven. But for this recipe, I'm using a deep fryer, so keep that in mind (maybe one of my Technique Tuesday posts in the future will explain how to fry foods without a fryer...).

Serves: Many
Prep. time: 10-15 minutes
Cooking time: Approx. 5 minutes (or until golden brown)
Difficulty: Easy
Special equipment: Deep fryer

Ingredients

• 1 package wonton wrappers
• 1, 8 oz. package Philadelphia cream cheese (I used the version with 1/3 less fat)
• 1-2 cups canned crab meat, drained and flaked/small pieces (I found this chilled at the fresh seafood counter at my local grocery store)
• Approx. 1/4 cup green onions, finely diced/chopped
• Approx. 1/4 tsp. grated ginger root
• A pinch of sugar
• Salt and pepper, to taste
• Small bowl of water (for sealing the wontons)
• Vegetable oil or other frying-safe oil (canola, safflower, peanut)

Be sure to taste the mixture to see if you have the right balance of ingredients. If you like a crabby wonton, add more crab meat, and if you like to taste more of the cream cheese, then add less crab meat. Add more or less ginger as desired.


Directions
In a medium bowl, combine the cream cheese, crab meat, green onions, ginger, sugar, and salt and pepper, then stir vigorously to combine. Lay out the desired amount (meaning, however many you plan to eat) of wonton wrappers on an ungreased baking sheet. Put a small spoonful of the cream cheese and crab mixture in the middle of each wonton wrapper. Dip your fingers in the water and run them along the edges of the wonton wrappers. Fold over each wrapper from one corner to the other, forming a triangle, and press the edges together to seal. Fry in hot oil until golden brown (I used a Breville deep fryer with vegetable oil, and I fried them at about 330*F). Once done, remove and place on a plate covered in a few layers of paper towels to soak up any excess oil. Plate and serve.

These little Chinese restaurant appetizers fry up golden-brown and bubbly and they're perfect as a party snack or an appetizer. If you want to make them a little fancier, replace the crab meat with lobster, or change how you fold the wontons to create a different presentation.

A Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

My recent holiday activities were food-and-cooking-centric, much to my delight, and offered a lot of fun times with family and some very excited cats (really though, our cats love Christmas—hiding under/climbing the Christmas tree, shredding up wrapping paper, jumping in empty present boxes...). Despite having a wicked sinus infection during the Christmas weekend which then led to the discovery of a particularly unpleasant antibiotic allergy, and the need for a new antibiotic, a steroid shot at the doctor, and prednisone (I'm oh so very tired of being sick, but I think everything is good to go now), I still enjoyed Christmas and New Year's.
Christmas was a blur of cakes, cookies, family, and sleep, and my favorite part of the weekend was the time we spent at my cousins' family home. Lots of dessert, some fantastic cooking-themed presents (pictured later in this post) from my cousins Katie and Jess, and the nostalgia that comes with spending time in a home I used to visit regularly every summer till high school (and where so many games of dress-up and Sailor Moon-themed Parcheesi were played).

Now, New Year's Eve and Day are a little different with my immediate family because, ever since I was a little girl, we've always celebrated our own Christmas, just the four of us, on New Year's Day (which I loved as a kid, because that meant I had three Christmases as a child—one at my paternal grandmother's home, one at my maternal grandmother's home, and one at my own home). We have a huge tree we put up and more ornaments than we can count (thankfully, we cut back this year), and there's always a tempting pile of presents tucked in all around the tree (usually, with a sleeping cat curled up behind them).

Gracie's enjoying a nap under the tree

Those tempting presents under the tree (combined with the gifts from my cousins) yielded some fantastic items, many of which will keep me busy in the kitchen every day. From my cousins, I got Ratio (this book will seriously help me in the kitchen), a new whisk, some fancy chocolate, and a bottle of famed Madagascar vanilla. From my parents, I got the most amazing-fantastic-beautiful-fancy-bestthingever: a pasta roller, with more attachments than I can ever imagine. There's also a small deep-fryer on backorder on it's way to me. Beyond those two big gifts, I got ramekins for my own kitchen (which I hope to have soon...along with a job...), a small and large plain white plate to use for plating dishes for photos for my blog, and some beautiful wooden spatulas, plus a few non-kitchen gifts. They also helped my grandma pick out a pasta cookbook, a small tripod for my camera (working my way to better blog pictures), a creme brulee torch, and oval ramekins for creme brulee for me. I am an incredibly lucky girl and I am so thankful for these gifts and for my wonderful family (and I'm SO excited to get in the kitchen this week and try out everything!).

Love the pasta maker!

Vanilla creme brulee, anyone?

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and a fantastic New Year's Eve and Day. :D