Wonton Noodle Soup

Ingredients

• 700g pork bones
• 1 piece dried flatfish or flounder, about 15g, or 2 tbsp dried shrimp
• 30g dried shrimp
• 1 thumb of ginger, sliced
• 2 spring onions, halved
• 2.5 litres cold water
• 250g raw peeled prawns
• 150g minced pork belly
• 1 tbsp light soy sauce
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 1 tsp Shaoxing wine
• 1 tsp caster sugar
• 1/2 tsp ground white pepper
• 1 tsp cornflour
• 40 thin wonton wrappers
• 4 nests thin Hong Kong egg noodles, about 250g
• 100g yellow garlic chives or choy sum
• 2 tsp fine salt

Before you cook

• Cover the pork bones with cold water in a pot, bring to the boil for 3 minutes, then drain and rinse off every trace of scum.
• Toast the dried flatfish in a dry pan for 2 minutes a side until it smells nutty, then break it into pieces.
• Soak the dried shrimp in warm water for 15 minutes and keep the soaking liquid.
• Chop two thirds of the prawns into rough 1cm chunks and mince the rest to a paste.
• Mix the prawns with the minced pork, light soy, sesame oil, Shaoxing wine, sugar, white pepper and cornflour, then stir hard in one direction for a full minute until the mixture turns sticky.
• Chill the filling for 20 minutes so it firms up.
• Place a teaspoon of filling in the centre of each wrapper, gather the wrapper up around it like a small pouch, and pinch the neck closed with wet fingers.
• Sit the finished wontons on a floured tray with space between them.

Steps

1. Put the blanched bones, flatfish, drained dried shrimp with their soaking liquid, ginger and spring onion into a large pot with the 2.5 litres of cold water.
2. Bring the pot to a bare simmer and skim off any foam that rises.
3. Simmer uncovered for 1 hour without ever letting it boil hard, which would turn the broth cloudy.
4. Strain the broth through a fine sieve into a clean pan and season it with the salt.
5. Bring a wide pan of unsalted water to the boil for the noodles and wontons.
6. Drop the wontons in and cook for 3 minutes, until they float and the wrappers turn translucent at the edges.
7. Lift the wontons out with a slotted spoon and divide them between four deep bowls.
8. Drop the garlic chives into the same water for 30 seconds, then lift them out.
9. Shake the noodle nests loose and boil them for 45 seconds only, so they stay springy.
10. Drain the noodles and refresh them under cold running water for 10 seconds, then dip them back into the hot water for 5 seconds.
11. Lay the noodles over the wontons in each bowl so the dumplings sit underneath.
12. Ladle the hot broth down the side of each bowl, top with the greens, and serve with chilli oil and pickled green chilli on the side.