Wonton Noodles (Prawn Wontons over Thin Egg Noodles in Clear Broth)

Variations

• Hong Kong sai yung (細蓉): a small bowl with four wontons and a single nest of noodles is the Hong Kong standard, and the reason for the small portion is explicit — you are meant to finish it before the noodles soften. If you want more, order a second bowl.
• Bamboo-pole noodles (竹昇麵): dough made with duck egg and no water at all, pressed by a maker bouncing on a bamboo pole. The result is unusually springy and fine. Hard to reproduce at home, so buy the thinnest Cantonese noodle you can find (dough and gluten).
• Dry-style (乾麵): the broth comes on the side and the noodles are tossed in oyster sauce and sesame oil. With the noodles never sitting in soup, the spring lasts longest of all.
• Malaysian and Singaporean wantan mee: dry noodles tossed in soy, lard and dark soy, topped with char siu and pickled chillies, with the broth and wontons served separately. Nearly a different dish from the Hong Kong one.
• Without dried flounder: increase the dried shrimp and add a little dried scallop. Less of that particular aroma, but the same direction of savouriness (building umami).
• Noodles and dim sum in the same family: har gow and siu mai steam much the same prawn filling, and char siu is what goes on top of dry-style wantan mee. Among noodles there are beef noodle soup, dan dan noodles and ramen, while jjamppong is this same Cantonese line gone spicy in Korea.

Tips

• Twenty to thirty seconds, then cold water. This is where the dish is most often lost. Cantonese thin noodles are alkaline and cook very fast, and without a cold rinse to pull the heat out they keep cooking on residual heat in the bowl. Cold water then five seconds back in boiling water looks fussy and is the entire source of the springiness (cooking noodles).
• Wontons at the bottom, noodles above. It is the rule in Cantonese noodle shops and the reason is plain: noodles fully submerged keep swelling while you eat. The wontons stay warm underneath and the noodles sit half out of the soup. Some shops put a ceramic spoon in first to hold the noodles up.
• Never let the broth boil hard. At a rolling boil, protein and fat emulsify and the broth goes cloudy. A clear broth is half of this dish and cloudiness cannot be undone (stocks and broth).
• The dried flounder must be toasted. Untoasted it leaves only fishiness; toasted, the amino acids react into the particular savoury aroma that is the signature of this broth.
• Boil the wontons in plain water, not the broth. Starch shedding off the wrappers clouds it. Cook wontons and noodles in the same water and heat the broth separately.
• Use thin wrappers. As thick as a dumpling skin, they stay pale even boiled and swell with soup. Cantonese wonton wrappers contain egg, look faintly yellow, and are close to paper.
• Chop only half the prawns. Whole pieces give the bite, chopped ones bind. Blitz it all and you get fishcake.
• Leave a tail; seal only the base. Seal the bottom firmly so nothing leaks and leave the top of the wrapper loose. That loose skin cooks soft in the broth and makes the contrast (wrapping and sealing).
• Blanch the gai lan separately. Boiled in the broth, the vegetable's bitterness and colour leach into it. Blanch and add at the end (blanching vegetables).
• Season with salt and white pepper only. Soy sauce colours the broth and the premise of a clear soup collapses (salt and seasoning).
• Wrap the wontons ahead and freeze them. Freeze them apart on a tray, then bag them. Cook from frozen with about a minute more. With the broth frozen separately too, this is a fifteen-minute weeknight dish (freezing and thawing).
• Eat it at once. A few minutes after assembly the noodles have drunk the broth and the spring that is the point of the dish is gone. Have broth, wontons and noodles all ready and leave only the assembly for last (serving temperature).