Wonton Chips

Culinary fads are always changing. Our current trend is using Wontons.

Wontons are traditionally found in many Chinese cuisines and are very versatile- usually fried or boiled in many different ways. Now, we've taken this useful item and use it in many different ways. We've...

• fried strips for a crunchy addition to salad
• replaced tortilla chips and use fried wonton triangles to dip in our handmade hummus or other flavor dips
• molded wontons into a cone and filled with salad for an easy grab-and-go appetizer
• piled duck, sweet potato and mango salsa on a wonton cone for an elegant small bite.
• stuffed it, fried it and served it with a sweet hot chile dipping sauce

On one of our cooking class nights we folded our stuffed wontons into Bishop's hats and triangles

Our meal from our Asian cooking class night. We dipped the wontons in a dish of Mae Ploy, a sweet chile sauce

Advice from the Chef

Before frying your wontons, make sure to dry them out a little. Peel apart your stack (cut into desired shape) and lay out to dry. This keeps the wontons from forming big bubbles are you fry them. The wontons will stick better and will look better, too.


We like to think outside of the box and serve inventive, creative and lip-smacking food. Follow your taste buds and dream big for the food at your next event!

Blanching

Chef Lou's cooking tip is all about Blanching

Blanching is a cooking process where you take a food, usually vegetables, fruit, or pasta, submerge it in boiling water, then after a time, submerge it in an ice bath to stop the cooking progress. There are many ways where blanching is needed but I will only talk about two uses.

For green beans, asparagus, etc:
Green beans are a little too crispy to eat raw, but sometimes an inexperienced cook will cook the beans too much and they turn out mushy. Blanching the beans takes out some of the crunch and cleans the vegetable of lingering bacteria.

To blanch the green beans, add the beans to a pot of boiling water. Cook for about a minute or so (asparagus takes about 30 seconds) until it changes color. Immediately remove the beans from the hot water and submerge in an ice bath (water and ice). The ice bath is very important because it stops the cooking process, keeping your beans at the right firmness.

 Cook the beans in the hot water until they change into a bright green color

Bonus tip: Sometimes we buy green beans at the store and they go bad within a couple of days and we didn't even have a change to cook them. Try blanching your green beans when you get home and they will last much longer in the fridge

For pasta:
Add pasta to a pot of boiling water and cook as directed on the box/package. When the noodles reach "al dente", immediately remove it from the hot water and submerge into an ice bath. Again this stops the cooking process and keeps your noodles from falling apart later as you start mixing it up.

Add this technique to your culinary repertoire and you will see improvement in your food!

Parsley is not just a Denny's decoration

When I say the word "Parsley", what comes to mind? Do you picture the curly dark green leaf that is featured on sub-par restaurant's fruit buffets? When you were younger, do you remember your mother telling you not to eat the curly leaf and that it was only "decoration for the food"?

If you do indeed recall these childhood memories about a dark green, curly, "non-edible" leaf then you do know what parsley is. Or rather, you know ONE TYPE of parsley.

The curly, bitter tasting offender

There is, however, another type of parsley- Italian Parsley. The Italian variety is a much better herb and we use a lot of it at Savory. It might just be one of our favorites. We use it with other herbs for an herb mixture, we chop it up and use it for garnishes, and we will flavor our food with it.

The superior form of parsley

Now, when picking up parsley at your local grocery store, it's easy to get it confused with Cilantro. Both have a similar leaf shape but cilantro has undertones of lime. Plus, it'll be labeled at the store. To mince, cut about halfway up the bundle and continue chopping until very small bits. You don't need to tear off each of the individual leaves, but don't include all of the stems, either. 

Use fresh Italian parsley in your cooking! It goes well with chicken, herbed bread, noodle soup, and many other dishes. Using fresh herbs will give off more flavor than dried herbs, and it will make your run-of-the-mill chicken dinner morph into a superb meal.