Traditional Wontons

My fondest childhood memories with my Dad involves our lunch dates in NYC’s Chinatown throughout the 1980’s. Every Saturday (and more often during the summer months) we would make the 30 minute drive from our home in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn to New York City’s Chinatown. I would get to choose what I wanted to eat and my Dad would choose the restaurant. The options were always Chinese, and specifically, Cantonese cuisine of either rice, noodles or dim sum. More often than not, I always wanted wontons or sui gow. Sui gow is similar to a wonton, but is bigger and has a crunchy element to it, like bamboo shoots. I loved them both so much that I often couldn’t make up my mind on which one to order. And then the noodles! I loved the egg noodles and hor fun, which is a flat rice noodle. How good was life back then when the hardest decision I had to make was wonton or sui gow, egg noodles or hor fun. My Dad’s favorite wonton restaurant was this hole in the wall on Pell Street. I have long since forgotten the name of the place and I wish I could ask my Dad but he’s no longer in this realm. I loved Wonton Garden on Mott Street. The cooks would cook our dumplings and noodles in these big pots of boiling water and broth right by the entrance of the restaurant. Always perfectly cooked, the wontons would have this perfect ratio of pork to shrimp. I loved how each piece had big chunks of shrimp so perfectly cooked, it almost felt crunchy biting into it. I was always such a skinny little girl that the waiters would be shocked at how quickly I inhaled all my food and drank every last bit of broth in my bowl.

At home, making dumplings always seemed like a big process. My mom would get a large hunk of pork butt, and painstakingly grind it herself with her big Chinese butcher knife. It was this steady rhythm of chopping, knife to butcher block, doong doong doong doong, until the pork was minced. She didn’t believe in buying already ground pork. She always insisted the dumplings come out better if she minced the pork herself.

It wasn’t until I left my nest that I attempted to make wontons on my own. I remember calling my parents on the phone from 3,000 miles away and asking them exactly what ingredients I need to buy and how much to use of each. My mom insisted I needed to get the pork butt and chop it up the way she used to. I opted to get already ground pork instead. But everything else, I kept the same. These dumplings are my heart, my childhood, my fondest memory of my Dad.