Folding Wontons

Easter Sunday 31 March 2013, the day I decided to conquer my fear of folding wontons.

There is a story to this fear. As I recalled, the last time I folded one, was in my teen years in my Mum's kitchen and I had failed miserably with all contents falling out from a torn wrapper. I was devastated. For me, it was a validation that I am more like a Malay than a Chinese person! This does not helped me at all, with my not liking to eat pork already and Mum always teasing me that I am not Chinese.

Obviously, I am not Malay, I just prefer to eat spicy Malaysian dishes more, to the mild boring plain old Chinese meals. Given a choice of Laksa or Sweet and sour pork, I would grabbed the Laksa. And this is why I never learnt to cook proper Chinese meals and hence why I failed to fold a wonton! What Chinese child does not know how to fold a wonton?? It is a disgrace, at least in my eyes!!! Hahhahahahaha, needless to say I have never tried again till this day.

So why? Why put myself in this situation again? To face yet another failure? Was I up to this challenge? No, I was scared shitless...BUT I was BORED!!

So here goes nothing. I didn't really have much to lose.

[And so I laughed at you, "you stupid little tiny wrappers! I am not scared of you.. I shall succeed and if not, Meh!!! There's Tassie.... he'll like the mince meat for dinner.. (the furkid in the house)"]

Crazy much? Absolutely.. This is what happens, when I get stuck in the that same level in Candy Crush... Argh!!

For my wonton fillings, I used these below.

Ingredients

Chicken Mince
Chives
Chopped scallions
Salt and Pepper
I teaspoon Minced garlic
1 TBspoon Soy sauce
I packet wonton wrappers
Water for sealing the wrappers

Method: I followed a youtube video. I found this instruction to be the easiest to understand.

You can deep fry these for an afternoon snack, or served as an appetiser with hot chilli oil sauce or you can add these wontons to soups or noodles. So many great things to use it with. I am so glad that I attempted this again, many years later.

So there... in my mouth, yo!

The Vic Hotel, Wagga

This is not a paid advertorial, the blogger dined at The Victoria Hotel at her bosses's expense...hehehe;)

So this week, we finally had our Xmas party lunch. It kinda became our "Xmas/Easter" breakup lunch get together. Our Xmas party got "postponed" because of work commitments and deadline last year.

For this function, the Bandi guys travelled up to Wagga and we chose The Victoria Hotel because it is affordable, value for money, has the room for us and is pretty consistent with its menu and service. We've been there before several times and loved it. You can't fault the steak here.

I didn't feel like a big lunch this time as I am still on my so called diet which is going pretty well, except for days when I craved carbs and then I hate myself when I feel bloated! Hahahaha. I need to lose some inches before Bangkok so that I don't get squashed in the cattle class on my flight. Argh!! Hate economy.. when am I going to ever travel J class???

So I ordered the Thai Beef Salad, it was a good portion, well balanced, lots of different types of greens in the salad. It does have an interesting dressing though! I do not believed that, this is Thai Salad as the dressing was all wrong, it was too sweet, someone had gone berko with the "kicap manis" ( dark sweet soy sauce) and there was no spice at all. It was not tangy nor spicy. A total let down. I think that if one wants to do an Asian dish, you should at least do it right. Don't bastardised a dish and called it what it is. The presentation was good, plate was neat and tidy. Being from a hospitality background, I look at the plating for marks and thumbprints, smears or drip of sauces. Nothing I hate more, than a dirty plate.

Here are what my workmates ordered. As you can see, beautiful plating, right? No one was allowed to start eating till I had taken a snapshot. You can't take me anywhere. As you can see, nothing wrong with the typical western pub meals. You can't do wrong in this category. The service was excellent, we didn't have to wait long for our meal. The plates were also cleared as soon as lunch was finished, the friendly waitress cleared as many glasses and plates as fast as she could.

Salt and Pepper Calamari

Chicken Parmagiana

Chicken Schnitzel

Steak Sandwich

Rump Steak with mushroom sauce

Beer Battered Chips

Lemon Tart

I was too full to have desserts. I took a photo of the Lemon tart because I thought that it look lovely. The chocolate cake that my other colleague had looked dry. I commented to my friend that it should be rich and moist, not dry and hard... served with lots of cream and icecream. The sticky date pudding looked so good. I really wished that I was not on a diet! Sigh! Must be strong and think of Thailand holidays!

And that concludes my "Chreaster" lunch and this old gal had to have a lie down in the arvo after two ciders.

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Victoria Hotel
55 Baylis St Wagga Wagga
Telephone (02) 6921 5233
http://www.vichotelwagga.com.au/



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