Friday fry-day: Vegetarian rangoon (or “mushroom” puffs)

Vietnamese version (bản tiếng Việt): click here!

Friday and frying time is back! It has been a rough week to me to prepare the final presentation for my class (about Transparent Solar Cell) that I abandoned the blog and the kitchen… Well, I’m all done with my semester now, so let’s go back the kitchen. Last time when I made my man’s favorite crab rangoon, I did not use up all the cream cheese. There was 3 oz left so I tried to make vegetarian puffs, replacing the crab with mushrooms, adding some soy sauce and lemon juice to season the filling. Again, I didn’t make the chili sauce because I found that the Mal Ploy sweet chili sauce and Cholimex chili sauce were already good for the dish.

In this recipe, I used dried mushroom, which I found convenient for storing and further cooking. These dried mushrooms can be found in any Asian grocery stores. Prior cooking, soak the dried mushroom for at least 30 minutes, and they would be “fresh” again.

Ingredients: (for 3 servings)

• Dried shiitake mushroom: 2 whole mushrooms
• Dried white fungus: 1/3 of the mushroom
• Dried wooden-ear mushroom: 1/2 whole mushroom
• Cream cheese: 3 oz
• Carrots: 1 baby carrot (~50 grams)
• Spring onion: 1 whole spring onion
• Garlic: 1 clove
• Shallot: 1/4 of whole shallot
• Soy sauce: 1 teaspoon
• Lemon juice: 1/2 teaspoon
• About 9 square wonton warps
• Cooking oil for deep-frying
• Sweet chili sauce when serving

Preparation:

• Soak the dried mushrooms in water for at least 30 minutes. At the same time, in a medium-sized bowl, add the cream cheese and let it soften to reach room temperature.
• While waiting for the cream cheese to get softened and the mushroom rehydrated, finely chop the garlic, shallot, carrots and spring onion.
• After at least 30 minutes of soaking, the white fungus would expand to the size of a small bowl. Only take 1/3 of the rehydrated white fungus, cut away the dark yellow root of the fungus and chop it into small pieces. Do the same to other rehydrated mushrooms (squeeze the shiitake mushroom prior chopping).
• Add all of the chopped ingredients to the cream cheese bowl, add soy sauce and lemon juice then mix all together.
• Place a wonton sheet on a flat surface. Use a dinner spoon and add 1 spoonful of filling to the center of the wonton sheet, brush the edge with cooking oil and shape the wonton by sticking the corners of the sheet together then pinching the edges together. Repeat until all finishing the filling and wonton wraps.

• Place the mushroom puffs in the freezer at least 30 minutes before frying (to make them harder and easy to handle). To fry, add the cooking oil to a deep fry pot at least 1.5 inches in depth and preheat to 350 F (~ 177 C). When the oil is hot, gently add the mushroom puffs to the pot and fry for 3 minutes. Take out the golden brown mushroom puffs and cool them on cooling rack then place them on paper towel to remove excess oil. It is best to serve them right away when they are still hot.

Total time: 1 hour and 15 minutes

Notes:

• Soy sauce + lemon juice is an alternative to the worcestershire sauce, if you don’t have one, like me!
• One spoonful of the filling using the dinner spoon is equivalent to a cookie scoop.
• Vegan option is available if you use vegan cream cheese.
• What to do with the remaining 2/3 of white fungus: making soup (Vegan soup of the spring)!

That’s it for my Friday fry-day! Hope you enjoy the recipe (like my lab neighbors)! And see you in the next post!