braaaaaains

Well, not really.

But that's what we called them when we were kids. My brother and I that is. We were odd kids (you're surprised, I'm sure) and if we could come up with an alternative name for something, the grosser the better, we did. So we called wonton soup "gopher brain soup." They do look like little brains.

Prepare for the apocalypse.

Wonton Soup

What you need:

• 1/2 lb ground pork
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 inch chunk of ginger
• 1 star anise
• 1 stalk lemongrass
• 1/4 tsp finely ground black pepper
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 2 tsp soy sauce
• 3 tsp rice wine vinegar (or some kind of rice wine)
• 3 green onions
• 2 c chicken broth (or pork or beef)
• wonton wrappers (about 25)
• baby bok choy (optional)

What you gotta do:

First, get your broth simering with some flavourants. One clove of garlic, the star anise (I'm kinda at the bottom of my bag and have only broken pieces left), and the lemongrass. You can leave out the lemongrass if you can't find it, but the star anise really makes the flavour in the broth.

While that simmers, mostly covered, over medium heat, make the wontons.

Yes, we are making wontons. It's not difficult and a lot faster than you think.

In a bowl, combine the pork, the other 2 cloves of garlic (after you mince them), the ginger (finely minced or grated on a microplane grater), the green onion (keep a bit of the greener parts off to the side for garnish), the pepper, the soy sauce, the sesame oil, and the vinegar.

My ginger looks a little odd in the bowl because it was blue. I once went to a restaurant called Blue Ginger, and I thought it was just a name, but nope; ginger can be blue.

Lemongrass is purple too!

So, mix up your pork with all the seasonings. It will be a nice moist meatball by the time you're done.

Now, the wrapping. Get yourself set up with a plate or two, a small dish of water, and some damp paper towels.

Use your 1 tsp measuring spoon to scoop a tsp of meaty filling onto a wonton wrapper.

I can get these at my usual grocery, but they were nearly impossible to find in Texas, and Recipe Guy and I had to go to 3 or 4 stores before we finally found them. Mine are in the frozen section, but you can sometimes find them near the vegetables. I don't know why. That's just where they were.

Wet the wonton wrapper and start folding. Folding is a two-hand job (handjob) so it's a bit tough to take pictures of. But here goes.

Fold the wrapper into a triangle and stick the top points together.

Push the two points that are sticking out in toward the points that are stuck together. You'll end up with a kind of four pointed star. Flatten the star so that you have a chubby little packet that's round on the bottom and flat at the top.

I hope that makes sense.

Once you get into the groove, they take seconds to make. It's not surprising that the wonton wrappers come in packages of about 500. You could easily make the whole package into wontons in no time. (no, it's not really a packet of 500, probably closer to 200, but still, that's a lot of wontons)

Okay, now for the cooking. You can boil these little dumplings right in the broth if you like, but I prefer to cook them separately. There are a couple reasons.

If you are making 500 wontons, you're going to be cooking them in batches. Much easier to do in a big pot of water. The 500 can be boiled and then kept in a container in the fridge for a good few days. Once they're cooked, drain them and drop them in the container with a few drops of peanut or sesame oil to keep them from sticking together; keep the broth in a separate container and make wonton soup whenever you want.

You can freeze them too, individually, on a cookie sheet then drop them in a bag and they'll be good for at least a couple months.

The other reason I prefer to cook them alone is the flour on the wrappers. It will cloud and thicken the broth and that's not the ideal aesthetic. You want the broth clear and light. Ideally. 

So, I dropped mine into a large pot of boiling water. Give them a stir right away so they don't stick to the bottom.

When they're done, they'll be floating, just like perogies or ravioli. They take about 7 minutes to cook. No, it's not a lot of time. It's just enough time to fish the anise etc. out of the chicken broth, trim and rinse the bok choy, and toss it in the broth.

By the time the wontons are done, the bok choy will be too.

For the final seasoning, put a splash of soy sauce and a few drops of sesame oil in the bottom of the bowl.

Drain the wontons, and drop them into the bowl, then ladle the broth on top. Garnish with the green onions.

Gopher brain soup for dinner!

Hey, I need some brains over here. It's midterm time, and once again it's all about the calculus.

And once again, I missed an ingredient in the ingredients pic.

Quick! What was it??

(this is a test and the result will go on your permanent record. forever.)

You Jelly?

This is a mesquite tree.

Mesquite trees have thorns. Be careful.

Mesquite trees also make beans.

Lots of them.

Beans can be made into jelly.

Beans?? Yup. Beans.

When they're "ripe" you can hear the seeds rattling around inside them, but a couple green ones isn't going to hurt anything.

Bean Jelly. Not Green Jelly, the hilarious 80s band that did a cover of "Three Little Pigs" metal style.

And the best part is that the beans grow wild across the street from Recipe Guy's house.

Mesquite Bean Jelly

• About a gallon of mesquite beans
• Water
• 2 c sugar
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 1/2 package of dry fruit pectin

I hate using the "package" measure, but I'm not sure how much that was... the package says 49 grams, so I guess around 25? It looked like maybe 1/6 of a cup... I think.

Kinda.

Um, I forgot to do an Ingredients pic with this one, so I'm just going to keep typing like I know what I'm doing.

The best way to rinse the beans is in a sink full of water.

This also encourages any critters who have been munching on your beans to vacate them. Yes, there will be critters. This is wild food which means it's someone else's link in the food chain, and you're going to have to out compete them if you want to eat.

Pick through the beans and remove any that have holes in them or look like they've been nibbled on. We had about a 50% recovery: we picked about 2 gallons of beans to get 1 gallon of usable ones.

Break the beans into pieces, cover them with an inch or two of cold water (above the bean level), and bring them to a boil.

After about 5 minutes, it starts to smell kinda sweet, almost like chamomile tea. Once it's boiled for 5 minutes, turn the heat off, cover it, and let it steep for another 30.

Definitely tea.

There's a distinct floral aroma, that you wouldn't expect from beans.

Strain the beans. You can pause here in the process and refridgerate or freeze your bean tea if you've done enough for the day.

When you're ready to make jelly, dump the tea back in the pot and bring it back to a boil. Keep boiling until you have 1 1/2 cups of tea. The colour definitely darkens as you concentrate it. This isn't the best light, but it's a lovely reddish gold colour.

(you can check your level by either pouring hot tea into a pyrex cup to check and then back into the pot to continue, or: before you start, put 1.5 cups of water in your pot to get an idea of what that level looks like then dump it out and put the tea in to boil)

I think this is the point at which we made a mistake.

Not a cataclysmic one by any means, but the end product wasn't quite what we were expecting.

We didn't let our tea cool.

This messed with our pectin, which needs to start out cool and then be heated, not poured into a pot of boiling tea.

Oops.

So, let your tea cool. Completely. Like until it's not hot.

Neither of us have ever made jam or jelly before and had no clue ... Taneasha is laffing at us, I know.

Okay, so with your cool concentrated tea...

Put the tea back in the pot and add the lemon juice, sugar, and the pectin.

Stir this gently as you bring it back to a boil. The recipe we found at Edible Austin said to boil it one minute, but looking at the pectin package... I'm seeing slightly different instructions. So, in addition not to starting with boiling tea, read the directions. (freaking engineers, think they know how to do things without instructions... )

Keep it at a full rolling boil (this means that the boil doesn't stop or slow if you stir it) for one minute.

Pour your supposedly thickened jelly into a large clean jar.

You can actually see the tiny beads of solidified pectin stuck to the sides of the pot in this pic. That's where some of the missing "jelly" went, I think. Wouldn't have happened if we'd started with cold tea.

We aren't properly "canning" the jelly because we only made a tiny test batch, and we're pretty sure it's going to be eaten quickly.

Because although it has the consistency of syrup,

it tastes fucking awesome.

The floral aroma totally stayed, and there's a distinct flavour of wildflower honey. Amazing on biscuits and with late season peaches.

This was my first attempt at using pectin to gel anything. What have you canned?