Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Chinese New Years - Spring Rolls

Chinese New Years is over, but the recipes are still fresh in my mind just as the food is stuck in my bowels. Just kidding, I shit like four times a day. Horray for whole grains. Today, I'll show all of you good folks how to make a batch of spring rolls.


Spring Rolls (春卷, Mandarin: chun1 juan3, Cantonese: ceon1 gyun2)

Ingredients: Spring Roll Wrappers, Cooking Oil, Eggs, Cabbage, Dried Shitake Mushrooms, Roast Pork, Mung Bean Sprouts, Water Chestnuts, Snow Peas, Salt, Soy Sauce, White Pepper

Let's prepare the filling first. The ingredient that will compose the plurality of the filling is cabbage. Cut the cabbage into thin strips and set it aside. While you're in the chopping mood, take some of those dried shitake mushrooms from last time and soak them in water for a half hour and rinse. Chop them up into thin strips along with some snow peas, roast pork, mung bean sprouts, and water chestnuts. You can use whatever you want in the filling, but this is how things are done in my parts.

Let me take some time to introduce some potentially unfamiliar ingredients. The first picture below show what mung bean sprouts (left) and water chestnuts (right) look like. Mung bean sprouts look similar to soy bean sprouts, but are thicker. The water chestnuts need to be washed, since they are often covered in dirt, and peeled. They have a very pleasant sweet taste to them. Both these vegetables (?) give the filling of the spring rolls a nice crunch to them and crunch is always good.

Mung Bean Sprouts (left) and Water Chestnuts (right)

Peeled Water Chestnuts Being Chopped

Rehydrated Dried Shitakes, Roast Pork, More Roast Pork, and Snow Peas

Cook the cabbage and mushrooms in a wok with some water until they're partially cooked. These things take the longest to cook. That's why they go in first. Next, we add the roast pork and snow peas. At this point, mix in some soy sauce, salt, and white pepper to taste. Lastly, mix in the water chestnuts and mung bean sprouts. They cook really quickly so we add them last.

Alright, the filling is now done. Set it aside as we get out our spring roll wraps. Open up the package and carefully separate each wrapping from each other and put them all in a pile. Beat a couple eggs in a small bowl. We'll use the egg to help keep the spring roll wrappers closed when we fry them up.



Now, we take some of the filling and place it one quadrant of the wrapper, leaving ample space around the edges. Roll the edge that is closest to the filling towards the other end. Once you get to the middle, fold the two side edges inward and then complete the roll. Use the egg wash to glue the loose flap at the end to the spring roll.



Now, we're ready to fry. Get yourself pot, fill that sucker with oil and turn up the heat. We used canola oil since we're cheap and it works just fine. Find a plate or pan for you to put the finished spring rolls on and put a couple layers of paper towel on the bottom to absorb any excess oil. Drop the spring rolls into the oil and wait for them to turn golden brown. Take them out, letting the excess oil drain back into the pot and set them down on your plate/pan. Repeat. Before you know it, you have yourself a whole lot of spring rolls! In our case, we made around 90 of them. You'd think that would be a lot, but after our not so little New Year's gathering, they were more or less gone.


A Lot of Oil (Above and Below)



Oh deep frying, the method of cooking that touches the heart in more ways that one. Things that are deep fried are generally delicious and these spring rolls are no exception. Just be aware that they aren't terribly good for you so you don't attempt to eat six of them at once for lunch or something like that. Speaking of which, I wonder how many of these Joey Chestnut could eat...

1 comment:

  1. Damn.. u guys make spring rolls at home? The final pic looks mighty yummy

    ReplyDelete