First, I've had this recipe from my favorite Food Network chef, Giada De Laurentiis, saved in my e-mail for months, always saying I'm going to make the Roasted Chicken Purses when I have a leftover baked chicken. Friday was my day!
Thursday night I went to one of my favorite Shreveport restaurants, Bistro Byronz, and ordered the Rosemary Chicken. Little did I realize, for lack of reading I am sure, that it was half of a chicken. Needless to say, I brought about 3/4 of it home.
For the Roasted Chicken Purses, Giada used some leftover chicken breasts she had from a rotisserie chicken. The leftover chicken was great because, as she did on the show, I shredded most of it with a fork, which made it great for the ravioli-ish mixture.
This was a very, very easy dinner, just combining the ingredients and then putting them into the wonton wrappers. I had never used wonton wrappers, let alone made my own raviolis, but now I love them!
After putting the mixture on the wrappers, you just add some egg wash and fold them up. You kind of bring all four sides up to the middle and twist to make a "purse" out of them. If you steam or boil them, they don't have to be perfect.Now, Giada says to boil them but I read the comments from reviewers beforehand who had their wontons fall apart. I decided to take a different approach, using my new vegetable steamer.
This was uncharted territory for me and there were no instructions on how long to cook them in a steamer so I was on my own.
I put half of them in the steamer and started my experiment. First, I tested them at 5 minutes (because that was the boiling time), then at 8 and finally at 10 I took them out. Well, sort of. They stuck! So, as carefully as possible, I removed them and had to unhinge some of their bottoms from my steamer basket for round two.This time, I put my thinking cap on and sprayed the basket with Pam! Viola!! AND, I searched the Internet, that handy dandy little thing, to see how long to steam wontons or dumplings. Some said as little as 12 minutes and some recommended 20. Since my filling was cooked, I opted for 12.
Oh, the Internet and Pam were the answer. 12 minutes was just about perfect. I sampled them and they were tasty. Even my not-a-big-fan-of-pasta father liked them. They do have a good bit of that lemon flavor so I hope you like citrus with your chicken, or else, omit the lemon zest. I found it refreshing!
I did decide to saute them in a little bit of butter afterward. I only put one tablespoon in a skillet with one sprig of thyme. Once melted, I turned off the fire, put the purses in and put a lid on it, turning them in the butter occasionally.
For a side dish, I used my wonderful steamer basket again. I put in slices of onion, bell pepper, squash and some fresh green beans, with a little Tony Chachere's of course. Those steamed almost 30 minutes because I had a lot of veggies in there.
But, my steamer basket was a ROCK STAR!
I had a great dinner and it was a very healthy option. I'm sure it would have been better without the butter, but for the amount of purses I ate, it wasn't that many ticks on the caloric calculator.
Overall, I highly recommend a steamer basket for all of your healthy vegetable needs as well as wonton wrappers for ravioli!
Now I'm ready for shrimp dumplings and wontons...the possibilities are endless.
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