Simple Wonton Soup to Warm Up Your Cold Valentine's Day

In Indonesia, it’s not uncommon to have households assistant to take care of your household errands. From cooking, cleaning, and also babysitting. I am quite privileged enough to grew up with 2-3 household assistants who I always considered as my own family (Ibu Mahmudah is basically the one who raised me!).

My grandmother used to be accompanied by a very nice, loyal household assistant that she even considered her as her own granddaughter. My grandmother made sure that she finished her school, paid for her diploma certification and even created saving account for her. 

One day, her mother came to my grandmother’s house and decided to bring her back to their village, and they were unsure whether or not she will come back to my grandmother’s house. We were skeptical that she would, but we kept in touch, asking her how she is and everything.  But one day trough a phone call my grandmother asked her whether or not she wanted to go back to Semarang. She said yes but she can’t. The reason is that she was going to get married. My grandmother understood but I didn’t.

Because she was a 13 years old girl. 

Mbak Si (not her real name) is a sweet 13 years old girl, which I also understand it’s illegal to hire her as a full time worker who worked above 3 hours a day. But the circumstances in my grandmother’s house was different. She worked, but mostly on taking care of my grandmother’s medication and my 5 and 2 years old cousin’s baby sitter. Other than that she still went to school and got full time salary and free accommodation. 

However, her family, like many other under privilege and less educated family who lived in rural area, believe that investing in her education, having her own saving account from her own salary is not the fastest way to get out of poverty. Marriage is. 

This adolescent forced marriage is not uncommon in Indonesia. When I was in law school, I had this initiative with some friends to provide legal assistance for under privileged society in rural area. Our assessment showed that most legal issues came from early and forced marriage, where most of them were performed under religious law or commonly known as nikah siri, where it was performed without being registered to government. The complexity of the problems extended to there are no marriage certification, where women and children are the most vulnerable. Many of them are left by their husband or sometimes their husband apparently already have previous wives before her and since there is no certification these young women and their children could not demand their rights. 

But, forced adolescent marriage is more complicated than that. My most concerned is actually about their health. Their children’s health. Child and mother mortality rate in Indonesia is very high, 359 out of 100.000 birth in 2012 (data by SDKI), where in some of the cases are because their mother’s adolescent body are not strong enough to bear a child. 

So this valentine’s day, instead of giving you story about my non existing love life, I would rather use your attention to raise awareness on this very important issue. 

This year valentine’s day UNFPA launched “I DONT” campaign with the aim to raise awareness that every year, millions of girls around the world are forced to say I DO, and it destroys their future. 

As a young woman itself, I could really resonate to that. What we need is not flowers, chocolate or promises that they do not intend to keep. What we need is opportunities. Opportunities to receive better quality of education, to have better employment, to be involved in decision making process, to receive health services including youth friendly sexual and reproductive health services, opportunities for us to have a better future. Marriage is not a solution to get out of poverty, investing in them is. 

Well, now that I got your attention to the issue, I will reward you with this simple recipe that could accompany you in discussing the importance of investing in young woman with your loved one this valentine’s day.

And since Jakarta has been raining for couple of weeks now (and surprisingly, Bundaran HI is not flooded!), a recipe of warm Simple Wonton Soup will definitely appropriate for the occasion. 

The only complicated thing about this recipe is that it takes quite some patience to make the wonton, but other than that, the ingredients are very easy but yet the taste of the soup is very rich. 

While you are making the wonton wrap, you can use that time to boil up the simple stock that I also feel you can use this for another soup recipe. It contains only ginger, garlic, scallions and soy sauce. 

The magic lies on the ginger and garlic, it creates strong smell and taste that it warms up your body when you sip the soup. 

I made around 12 wontons wrap and it only served 2 portions. But again, it always depend on how many wonton wrap that you are able to eat, the more the better I guess. 

So tonight, hopefully you got to try this recipe with your loved one, got yourself cuddle up, and share your thought about the issue that I just rant to you guys about. Tell them what you want for your future. 

So happy valentine's day people! Selamat mencoba! 

Ingredients

Wonton 

200 grams of chicken meat, minced

1 scallion, chopped thinly

1 tbs of soy sauce

salt and pepper to taste

egg wash

Wonton/spring roll wrap

Stock

500 ml of water

3 cloves of garlic, crushed

4 cm of ginger, crushed

3 big scallions

3 tbs of soy sauce

salt and pepper to taste

1 big thinly sliced scallion to garnish

Instructions

1. Mix chicken with sliced scallions, soy sauce, salt and pepper; 
2. Use white egg for egg wash, take one slice wonton wrap, apply the egg wash in one side of the wrap, put the chicken mix in the middle, fold the wrap into two, and fold it again to the shape that you desired (I made the ribbon kind of shape by tucking in the middle of the wrap and fold the end of it); Make as many as you like;
3. While you are doing that, prepare the stock by put 500 ml of water in a large pot, add garlic, ginger, whole scallions, and soy sauce. Bring them to boil.
4. Once the stock boiled, put aside all the ingredients, add the wontons, and add salt and pepper to taste. 
5. Simmer until the wonton are cooked. Garnish with scallions.