Wonton Wrapper Appetizers

Two weeks to retirement. Goodbye lunches starting. Tuesday, Mr. Tran from Pho 79 — no relation, just shared surname — closed his restaurant for an hour at 2 PM and fed me a bowl of pho he'd been making for thirty-two years. We didn't talk much. He filled my bowl. I ate. He smoked a cigarette outside the back door. I waved when I left. He nodded. That's the goodbye for thirty years of business between two Vietnamese-American men. Words are rationed in this culture. The pho says what needs saying.

Wednesday, Mrs. Patel at the Indian-Vietnamese fusion place in Stafford — improbable concept, surprisingly good food, twelve-year client — gave me a bag of homemade samosas and made me promise to come back as a customer. I will. I do. The samosas were excellent. Spiced with cumin and curry leaf and a hint of fish sauce, which is how she fuses, and which I appreciate more than I can express.

Thursday, Charlie at the Cajun-Vietnamese seafood boil place in Galveston — yes, Cajun-Vietnamese, yes, in Galveston, yes, it works — sent his son to my office with a five-pound box of head-on shrimp packed in ice. The note said: "Take these home. Boil them like Carlos did." Charlie's grandfather had worked with Carlos on the boats — the Carlos who died in 1997, the Carlos I have not stopped thinking about for twenty-eight years. I hadn't known Charlie's grandfather knew Carlos. Apparently he had. The shrimp arrived as a kind of inheritance. I drove home with the box on the passenger seat and I had to pull over twice on 610 because the world got blurry.

Boiled the shrimp Friday. Old-school Vietnamese-Cajun method: water, salt, lemongrass, ginger, a little Old Bay, a little fish sauce, a few crushed garlic cloves, a couple of dried chilies. Boil for ninety seconds, ice bath, peel as you eat. Served on a newspaper-covered table with a beer (La Croix for me) and a bowl of nuoc cham for dipping. Mai came over for it. We ate three pounds of shrimp between us, mostly silent, the way you eat when the food is doing the talking. Mai said, halfway through, "Carlos was good?" I said, "Carlos was good." She said, "Then we honor Carlos." We did. We honored Carlos. The shrimp were the prayer.

Mai and I had three pounds of shrimp between us that Friday, and when we were done, the newspaper on the table looked like a crime scene of gratitude. I’d had some of Charlie’s wonton cups at his Galveston place once — little crispy shells with shrimp and lemongrass and just enough Old Bay to know where you were geographically — and I found myself making them the following weekend, trying to hold onto something from that week. If the boil was the prayer, these were the quiet hymn before it. You make them fast, you eat them standing up, and somehow that’s exactly right.

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 15 min | Total Time: 35 min | Servings: 6 (4 cups each)

Ingredients

24 wonton wrappers
Cooking spray
1 lb medium shrimp, peeled, deveined, and roughly chopped
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 stalk lemongrass, tender inner core only, very finely minced
1 teaspoon Old Bay seasoning
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
4 oz cream cheese, softened
3 green onions, thinly sliced
1–2 small dried red chilies, crumbled (or 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes)
Fresh cilantro leaves, for garnish
Lime wedges, for serving

Instructions

Form and bake the cups. Preheat oven to 375°F. Lightly coat a 24-cup mini muffin tin with cooking spray. Press one wonton wrapper into each cup, gently folding the corners up to form a small bowl shape. Lightly spray the tops. Bake 8–10 minutes, until edges are golden and crisp. Remove and let cool slightly in the tin.
Cook the shrimp filling. Melt butter in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add garlic and lemongrass and sauté 1 minute until fragrant. Add shrimp in a single layer and cook 2–3 minutes, stirring once, until just pink through. Season with Old Bay and fish sauce. Remove from heat and stir in lime juice. Let cool 5 minutes, then roughly chop if pieces are large.
Mix the filling. In a bowl, beat cream cheese until smooth. Fold in the shrimp mixture, green onions, and crumbled chilies. Taste and adjust seasoning — it should be savory, a little funky from the fish sauce, with a mild back-heat.
Fill the cups. Spoon 1 heaping teaspoon of filling into each baked wonton cup. Return filled cups to the oven for 3–4 minutes, just until the filling is warmed through and the edges of the wrappers deepen to dark gold.
Serve immediately. Transfer to a platter, scatter fresh cilantro over the top, and serve with lime wedges on the side. These are best eaten standing up, with a cold drink and someone you don’t need to explain anything to.

Nutrition (per serving)

Wonton Wrapper Appetizers — What You Put on the Table When the Food Is the Prayer