Creamy Crab Wontons

Summer is in full force. Twenty hours of daylight. The midnight sun. The Alaskan summer that compensates for winter's cruelty with light so excessive it feels like an apology. I walk the coastal trail at 5 AM before shifts and the inlet is already sparkling and the mountains are already lit and the world is already alive and the aliveness is the gift that Alaska gives after extracting the winter's toll.

The food writers' panel was this week — virtual, two hours, six writers representing six regional American cuisines. I talked about moose adobo and salmon sinigang and the king crab lumpia and the intersection of Filipino and Alaskan that exists only because Lourdes and Reynaldo crossed an ocean and met new ingredients and the meeting produced a cuisine that doesn't have a name except "Santos family food" and now, through the blog, has an audience of fifteen thousand who call it "Filipino-Alaskan." The naming is the naming. The naming makes it real.

The other panelists — a Cajun food writer from Louisiana, a Hmong-American cook from Minnesota, a Navajo chef from Arizona — all had versions of the same story: their food exists at an intersection, their recipes are unprecedented, their kitchens are the places where two worlds met and the meeting produced something new. The shared story. The immigrant story. The intersection story. We are all moose adobo. We all come from somewhere and arrive somewhere else and the arriving changes the recipe.

I made a feast for one after the panel — adobo, sinigang, lumpia, rice. The four pillars. The foundation. The recipes I talked about on a national panel, the recipes that are famous now (relatively, modestly, in the way that food blog recipes are famous, which is not very but is enough), the recipes that are still, fundamentally, Lourdes's recipes, Reynaldo's recipes, the Santos family recipes that have traveled from Iloilo to Anchorage to fifteen thousand screens. The feast for one. The celebration that doesn't need an audience because the feast is the audience and the feast is complete.

After the panel ended and the screen went dark, I went straight to the kitchen — because that’s where I process things, always. I’d spent two hours talking about king crab lumpia on a national stage, describing how the wrapper and the filling are a conversation between two places, and I needed to make something that felt like that conversation in my hands. These creamy crab wontons are the weeknight cousin of that lumpia — faster, simpler, but carrying the same idea: Alaskan king crab folded into something delicate, something borrowed, something entirely ours.

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 15 min | Total Time: 35 min | Servings: 4 (about 24 wontons)

Ingredients

8 oz cream cheese, softened
6 oz crab meat (king crab or Dungeness), drained and flaked
2 green onions, finely sliced
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp white pepper
24 wonton wrappers
1 egg, beaten (for sealing)
Vegetable oil, for frying (about 2 cups)
Sweet chili sauce or soy-ginger dipping sauce, for serving

Instructions

Make the filling. In a medium bowl, combine the softened cream cheese, crab meat, green onions, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, garlic powder, and white pepper. Stir until fully blended and smooth.
Fill the wontons. Lay a wonton wrapper flat on a clean surface. Place about 1 teaspoon of filling in the center. Brush two adjacent edges with beaten egg, then fold the wrapper diagonally to form a triangle, pressing firmly to seal and remove any air pockets.
Shape (optional). Bring the two outer corners of the triangle together and pinch to seal, forming a classic wonton shape. Repeat with remaining wrappers and filling.
Heat the oil. Pour vegetable oil into a heavy-bottomed pot or deep skillet to a depth of about 2 inches. Heat over medium-high until the oil reaches 350°F.
Fry in batches. Working in batches of 5–6, lower wontons gently into the hot oil. Fry for 2–3 minutes, turning once, until golden brown and crisp on all sides. Do not overcrowd the pot.
Drain and rest. Remove with a slotted spoon and transfer to a plate lined with paper towels. Let rest for 2 minutes before serving.
Serve. Arrange on a platter and serve hot with sweet chili sauce or a soy-ginger dipping sauce on the side.

Nutrition (per serving)

Creamy Crab Wontons — The Feast for One That Needs No Audience