By Alex Ripepi

Senior Columnist

Sometimes it’s nice to escape the monotony of lunch meat, cheap ramen, and indistinguishably flavored microwaveable meals and just indulge. A great way to do this is to prepare a meal that entails not just a delicious final product, but a prep that is enjoyably mindless. For these reasons, I’m here to talk to you about the Church of the Wonton. Firstly, this recipe isn’t Kosher, I apologize in advance, but fun fact: it will probably still work with substitutions. For the base wonton that on its own could constitute a meal, you need ground pork, ginger, napa cabbage, a leek, and garlic. For each of the veggies, mince them all, and mix them with a slosh or two of soy sauce, and about a half cup of sesame oil. Be forewarned, this will make a very large amount of wontons, and if you plan to wrap every single bit of the mix, you will need to set aside a large chunk of time or gather some friends to help you for little to no pay. Wrapping in its own right isn’t difficult; it’s gauging how much meat mix should go into each wonton. With the typical wrapper, for example I used Nasoya wonton wraps, with the filling about the size of half a bouncy ball. Place the filling in the middle of the wrapper, then use water on two edges of the wrapper. Fold the dry opposite edges over so you end up with a lumpy triangle, and burp air out of the edges before sealing the wonton as best you can. After this, lightly wet the ends of each “tail” of the wonton, and then fold and press them together. Frying is the hardest part. Make sure the oil is hot before starting to cook, and then cook the wontons for about a minute on each side until golden brown. If you’re worried about the state of the filling, cook longer. I used a small “frydaddy” type appliance that made the whole process much simpler, but when frying in any circumstance, the more safety precautions taken, the better; nobody likes oil burns. Now for the interesting part. I’ve never done anything inspired with the wonton, so I decided this time I would set aside some of the veggie mix on its own, and then make some crab rangoon for a richer taste. Lastly, for a desert take on the dish, I straight up wrapped and fried some banana. On their own, the veggies and rangoon were much easier, as I substituted imitation crab for the canned crab the recipe called for. The veggies were simply the mix of veggies from the pork wontons flying solo, and they were delicious. There’s not much to say about them, they work very well. The banana was amazing, frying something sweet very seldom ends poorly, and the only negative about the bananas was the awkward wrapping process. I recommend mashing them with a tiny bit of brown sugar or spice of your choice. This allowed for a much more relaxed cooking process, as nothing in the vegetables, banana or rangoon recipe needed to be cooked for safety aside from the wrapper itself. The only part of this process that is even slightly difficult is making absolutely sure that the crab is wrapped well enough so that the cheese doesn’t ooze out into the fryer or pan. I would recommend having a wonton party with a few friends, and create your own fillings. Each wrapper package comes with about 50, so bring an appetite as well.