wontons

there was a time i was making these all the time because i'd be buying the 2 kilogram packets of wonton wrappers because they were so cheap. so everytime there was something on, i'd turn up with a huge basket of deep fried wontons and sweet and sour sauce. my friends don't associate me with wontons, but i do wonder if miss k and miss c's freinds do....maybe not, because i haven't done them for a while.
anyway, i thought i'd better post an entry today, and why not this?
i'm only going to give a list of ingredients and leave it to your own discretion as to the quantities. i do use more greens (garlic chives, spring onions and coriander) than meat (minced pork/chicken/beef/lamb) - i had dumplings in hong kong once from the roadside and there was hardly any meat! the greens i use are usually treated as herbs, but i use them by the bunch as vegetables in wontons. in fact, i use bunches of each to very little meat.
i also add eggs, fried eggs....eggs fried in tons of oil.... i was watching this girl from china make the filling once, and she used eggs fried in tons of oil. if i wasn't mistaken, i'd say that there was half the quantity in oil in the frypan to the quantity of eggs. need i spell it out? one cupful of eggs is fried in half a cupful of oil. the eggs are beaten lightly, stirred into the hot oil to cook, left to cool in the oil, chopped up and placed, oil and all, into the mixing bowl with everything else.
so what's everything else? i better list them:

mince (your choice)
soya sauce, both light and dark
sesame oil
chinese rice wine
pepper
salt (if you use tons of soya sauce, this is optional, of course)
spring onions
garlic chives
coriander
chopped, fried egg
chinese mushrooms
chopped spinach
water chestnuts
cornflour, 1 or 2 tablespoons per kilogram of meat
wonton wrappers

for some reason, i don't measure anything for this, even the cornflour is a bit hit and miss.
i use an electric handheld mixer to combine everything together because i don't like getting my hands dirty and smelly, and also, because i think it does a much more thorough job and quicker than i could ever dream to do it.
at this stage, it's really useful to have a large area to work on and a friend or two - that really speeds thing up, especially if you want to make tons like i always do. yes, i like to make a ton of wonton.......sorry.
layout the wrappers on the work bench and place a small amount of filling in the centre of each one; don't try to use to much filling because that will only lead to tears of despair when the filling cannot be enclosed properly and falls out either before or during the cooking process. you have been warned....try to be a little frugal here.
brush the edges of the wonton wrapper with a smidge of water and seal the filling in the wrapper. you can be fancy with the wrapping and put little pleats in the edge, as miss k does, or do as i do and simple fold the wonton wrapper in half to form a triangle and roughly squish to make pretend pleats, or just put the wrapper in your palm and squeeze, as i have seen some people do.
once an adequate number of dumplings have been made, it's up to you to decide as to whether you want to boil or deep fry the dumplings. that's it.