Winter Solstice Wontons

Wontons wrapped "envelope" style that are ready to be boiled...

The shortest day of the year has come and gone with winter solstice.

It's also a day for families to gather for dinner.

I was inspired by a friend who posted pictures of wontons he had made a few weeks ago and I decided to do the same.

The end result is delicious wontons!

He used minced pork with watercress and mushrooms, but suggested I could make whatever filling I wanted.

Tonight I made one by combining minced pork, finely chopped cabbage, chives, mushrooms and shrimp. They were mixed with some salt, soy sauce, sesame oil and Shaoxing wine.

I didn't really know how to wrap wontons and did it the "envelope" style... but taste-wise they were delicious, the crunchiness of the cabbage and chives and the shrimp added more texture. They were light and not hard to eat a lot of them!

I've just Googled other ways to wrap the wontons and can't wait to try to wrap them again...

Fact of the Day: Instant Soup Noodles are Very Salty

So many different kinds of instant noodles, so much sodium in each pack!

I don't know about you, but I try to avoid eating instant cup noodles unless it's the last thing left on the planet to eat.

Not only are the noodles deep-fried, but now I have another reason to avoid them like the plague -- the soup base is laden with salt. How much you ask?

A study of 10 types of Asian soup noodles by the Hong Kong Consumer Council and the Centre for Food Safety shows more than 75 percent of the samples contain so much sodium that it can affect high blood pressure and heart disease.

Instant noodles have enough sodium for three days' worth

Of the 100 samples, 76 of them contained sodium levels that exceeded the World Health Organization's (WHO) recommended daily sodium intake of 2,000mg for an average adult. The average sodium content of the samples was 350mg per 100g.

The sample with the highest sodium was a type of spicy rice noodles that contained a whopping 6,000mg per bowl -- triple the WHO limit.

Perhaps people needed a gallon of water while they ate these noodles to wash down the saltiness!

"Eating one bowl of these rice noodles will consume three days' worth of sodium in one sitting," warned Dr Henry Ng, the centre's principal medical officer.

The other noodles were in tom yum soup, spicy noodles with pork belly and cuttlefish balls, barbecue pork ramen in pork bone soup, dan dan noodles with spicy and minced pork, stewed beef noodles and seafood laksa.

"Even the lowest sodium sample, a wonton noodle with 1,200mg, exceeds the intake limit by 80 percent, Ng warned. "The high sodium content in most of the samples in the test is putting consumer health in jeopardy with increased risks of high blood pressure and cardiovascular diseases," he said.

Avoid eating them altogether or cut down on the soup base

Ng advised consumers to either cut down on drinking the soup base or avoid it in order to cut down their sodium intake. But even if you do that, you're still ingesting way beyond the recommended amount from WHO.

What I don't understand is why the Hong Kong government is not insisting on producers of these noodles, and heck any other processed food product, to drastically cut down on their sodium content?

People in Hong Kong buy products without thinking about how much sodium is in them. Shouldn't the government be looking out for its residents' well being? That in turn would help reduce medicare costs.

If anything the government should encourage its citizens to be as healthy as possible, with the aging population outstripping the number of babies born each year.

While it's great the Consumer Council comes up with these warnings periodically, more needs to be done to educate the public on the perils of processed foods and businesses should be encouraged to find out ways to produce good, healthy food at a decent cost.

Picture of the Day: Mak's Noodles in Vancouver

One of the bite-sized wontons in my wonton noodle soup in Richmond

Yesterday we picked up our relatives from the airport who are visiting North America for the first time and since they were hungry after their flight from San Francisco, we decided to take them for a bite to eat at Mak's Noodles -- in Richmond, a municipality next to Vancouver.

It's in one of several strip malls in the area, and by the time we arrived, just before 3pm on a Sunday, the place was packed.

While this Mak's Noodles is a branch of the original in Hong Kong, the portion sizes are different. Here they are decent-sized bowls. The wontons are quite similar, small and there is a greater proportion of shrimp to pork. The noodles are good too, but the alkaline taste is not as pronounced and not cooked al dente.

Nevertheless, for a bowl of wonton noodles here it's CAD$5.75 (around HK$34), slightly cheaper than the HK$39 in Hong Kong -- and almost twice the portion of noodles.

The menu in the Richmond branch has many other dishes too, like congee, spring rolls and deep-fried dace balls.

Mak's Noodle House

Alexandra Plaza, 190-8291 Alexandra Road

Richmond

(604) 231 8141