KITCHEN ADVENTURES: WANTON! WANT ONE? In which I make some things with wonton wrappers! This was ridiculously easy–not sure why I was so intimidated beforehand.

Basically, I bought a $2 pack of wrappers. I set the oven to somewhere in the low 400s–I did several batches of these, generally between 400 and 420, adjusting the cooking time accordingly between about 8 minutes and 10 minutes–and covered a baking tray with parchment paper. I laid out lots of wrappers on the tray.

In the center of each wrapper, I made a little mound of whatever the filling was. I did a few really simple ones with a papaya goat cheese plus some fresh cilantro. (I bought a cilantro plant, and I haven’t even killed it yet! I have been calling it my nom-nom plant.) But the ones I did most frequently were filled with cream cheese, chopped garlic, fresh corn cut off the cob, plum tomato, crushed red pepper, and fresh cilantro. Obviously you only use a little bit of each thing, and it can feel kind of fussy messing around with this tiny chunk of tomato, but it’s totally worth it.

Anyway, once I had my filling on there, I filled a shallow bowl with water, dipped my fingers in, and moistened the edges of each wrapper, then folded and crimped and smoothed it until it was, you know, some kind of dumplingish thing. Sometimes I needed to add an extra wonton wrapper because I’d put too much filling on the thing. Once the dumplings were formed, I brushed them all over with olive oil and put them in the oven on the parchment-papered tray, and baked, as I said, between 8 and 10 minutes. I think 9 minutes at 400 was just about perfect. The more dough you use the greater the chance that the edges will blacken, so, you know, keep an eye on your oven. If you’re making these for the first time, you might check up on them at the five-minute mark, or when you start to hear the oil sizzle.

When they were all crispity and brown, I took them out, and used a fork to lift them off the paper into a bowl. I haven’t tried eating them in soup yet–I just waited several tantalizing minutes until they were cool enough to eat by themselves. They were delicious. Just incredibly tasty.

The one problem is that the wrappers did get noticeably harder to work with each day after the first day. The second day was basically fine; the third day was dicey and I had to throw some wrappers out because they were too dry and stiff. Either there is a better way to store them in the fridge, or you should save these for when you want a lot of wontons….