won tons and paper owls

Have you ever heard of six degrees of separation?  Its this theory that any one person on earth could be six people away from any other person on earth in terms of an introduction.  Google it, cuz I am botching the explanation and it is merely a witty intro for a rant about won tons and paper owls.

What?  What could won tons and paper owls have in common you ask?

Well a couple of things, and we don't need six degrees of anything to see their similarities.

1. Folding.  They both involve folding.

2. I suck at doing them. Both.

This plan was flawed from the get go.  I mean when you consider me saying "I am going to make something new" you know already the odds for success are a tad low.  But I had no idea that won ton making was such a bleeding art form.  I know now.  I will always respect a well formed one, from this day forward.

To complicate things, my husband, Paul Bunyan himself, has decided we need to use cast iron.  I should hang my head in defeat now, but I won't.  We need new pans, and being the outdoorsy, woodsy, survivalist he is my husband thinks cast iron should be in our kitchen and not just our camping gear.  I can't say I disagree, exactly, but I can say that there are rules with cast iron and I do not know them all.

With these thoughts in mind, lets look at my inspiration.

Don't I always find beautiful inspiration?  I should get credit for that, at least.

Technically she calls them Spinach Pouches, and they looked delish when I saw them on Pintercrack.  I gather my ingredients and immediately notice that I want more seasoning because I am like that.  So I italic what I added.

• 1 box (10 oz) Frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed dry
• 4 oz cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup ricotta cheese
• Large size wonton wrappers
• oil for frying 
• sea salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
• garlic powder, to taste
• onion power, to taste

I thawed and drained my spinach, debated doubling the recipe because I had the supplies but opted not to.  Thank Gawd.  Mixed the spinach, cream cheese, and ricotta (obviously this was not a dairy free recipe and I had to be careful) together with the seasoning.  I added all four (salt, pepper, garlic powder and onion powder) because I really felt it needed it.  I tasted it and loved it, so I moved on.

I love spinach, but drained, thawed spinach looks really unappetizing. 

All of the ingredients mixed for the filling, and it is looking a little less icky. 

I am guessing the "large size" won ton wrappers she speaks of on that blog are not whatever I had.  I had itty bitty little wrappers that were tiny and numerous.  I wound up folding them like the package says, which made them look more like won tons than the "spinach pouches" I was emulating.  I had to experiment a bit with how much filling to use, she said a teaspoon but that was way too much in my wrappers.

She said to use a teaspoon ...

Is that the right amount?

Nope.

There it is!  Less than a teaspoon worked.  

Once I figured out the right amount without exploding won tons I was able to really get going.

And make fifty thousand of them.  Well, it felt that way.

Some of the finished product.

Once they were all made I had to figure out what I was allowed to do with the cast iron pan.  Paul Bunyan took pity on me and helped because I have an adorable tendency to burn the piss out of my hands when frying things, even with pans I am familiar with.

Burns were kept to a minimum, and only some of the won tons were a bit dark in places as opposed to golden.  Our oil also hit the smoking point at one point so my eyes were burning like a mutha by the time we were done.  Because the filling had an Italiany taste to me I made some marinara to dip it in.

All in all they were pretty good.  Not as pretty, only some were burned and a couple had raw spots, but they weren't bad at all.  I figure since my husband wanted to take some for lunch today we could count them in the didn't-screw-that-one-up category!