Jewish, Yet Wonton
Who among us would ever voluntarily choose to eat soup over pie? Further, who would choose to eat a third helping of soup over a generous piece of home-made pie? Certainly not Me of Little Restraint. Marc, on the other hand, ate three full bowls of Jewish Turkey-Wonton Soup rather than a piece of either of my silky pumpkin or scrumptious apple pies. That’s how good this soup was. It’s practically a legend.
We upped our own personal ante this week with the challenge of finding some uncommon ingredients- uncommon by Canadian prairie standards, at any rate. Actually, this recipe didn’t represent much of a challenge as all we had to find were wonton wrappers; the recipe for Sunday night takes the blue ribbon in the hard-to-find-ingredient category.
We found this recipe in Food & Wine magazine in an article about a fellow in Austin who started a company selling soup door-to-door. Apparently, he wanted something more rewarding than a “mind-numbing office job” (Ha! Imagine that!) and decided to quit what he was doing and start making and selling soup to people who would subscribe to have a weekly delivery. He is The Soup Peddler; he or someone on his staff delivers the soup to home or office by bike. In the summer, I bet delivering hot soup to Austinian suburbanites by bike is pretty close to being as hot as a proverbial hell. Anyway, one of the Soup Peddler’s creations is this recipe.
Judging by the fact that we had zero leftovers, I would say that we have hit upon a gem. The turkey stock is made by simmering a turkey leg (well, we used a thigh) for about two hours with veggies, etc. and then chopping up the cooked turkey meat to form a filling for wontons that are tossed back into the pot at the last minute. Fantastic, really. Very rich and filling but not overwhelmingly salty, like chicken soup so often is. I understand why people would subscribe to this delivery and this is only one of his many creations. We must try more. The truly best part is that while we have no leftover soup, we do have several leftover wontons. Shall we deep-fry them, then?