Well, obviously, you go to the internet!
And when you get there, you find at least one awesome recommendation: Thai spring rolls.
Have you ever had Thai spring rolls? I kind of think of them as salad rolls. They're fresh ingredients, including lettuce & carrots and other veggie stuff, wrapped in thin, moist rice wrappers. Amy has pointed out that vermicelli (or some similar noodle) is also a critical component, although I never really noticed that myself. And, of course, there's some kind of dipping sauce. That's a critical component as well. Apparently carnivores frequently include shrimp or chicken, but even as a former carnivore that seems not quite right. One of the beauties of Thai spring rolls to me has always been that fresh, raw vegginess.
So, anyway, last night I set about to make us some CSA Thai spring rolls. Here's how I did it.
First I went to the store and got some spring roll wrappers. Turns out even our semi-lame Food Lion store sells them. "Red Rose Spring Roll Skin." Great.
There were a number of recipes on the web, but they kind of boiled down to "you can put whatever veggies you want in your spring rolls." My restaurant experience with them clearly involved lettuce and carrots. Amy's clearly involved noodles. I decided I also wanted to use some of these other salad goodies from the CSA: baby turnips and radishes. So here's the sum total ingredients:
- Chopped leaf lettuce (CSA) - about a cup and a half
- One medium-size radish, shredded (CSA)
- One medium-size baby turnip, shredded (CSA)
- Six or so baby carrots, shredded (store-bought)
- 5 red scallions, chopped (CSA)
- Bean thread noodles (softened in boiling-hot water), about 1/3 package (had them in the pantry)
- About 1/4 cup chopped, fresh cilantro (store-bought)
- 2 tbsp lime juice
All that went into a bowl, and I mixed it up by hand. Voila, instant spring roll innards.
Sauce:
This is the base sauce that I went with: http://vegetarian.about.com/od/saucesdipsspreads/r/DippingSauce.htm
I didn't use fresh garlic, not because I didn't have any, but because all the other chopping took so long that I just didn't want to deal with it. So I used garlic powder instead (1/4 teaspoon). Also, I decided I wanted some peanut taste to it, because that's what I remember from the restaurants. So I added some peanut butter. I just eyeballed this. I added it after I had cooked up everything else according to the instructions, and just whisked it in.
Wrapping the rolls!
This was the exciting part. It turned what was just so much veggie-stuff into cool-looking rolls. It turns out it's not really that hard. I read the step-by-step instructions here: http://vegetarian.about.com/od/cookingtipstools/ss/Howtospringroll.htm
When all was said and done, it looked like this:
So how was it?
Way better than I expected. I had enough veggie mix to make 8 rolls, and still have leftover mix. Those rolls were great. I really did not expect my first shot at this to turn out so much like the restaurant rolls. They weren't perfect, however. First, I didn't roll them tight enough, and when I cut them in half, the ingredients tended to spill out. I corrected this the following day when I made a second batch of five rolls with the leftover mix. Rolled more tightly, this problem pretty much went away. Second, the bean thread noodles were very limp, and didn't provide the same texture as the noodles in the rolls we've had in restaurants. I'll have to experiment with some other noodles in future batches. Lastly, Amy said she prefers a sauce that is more straight "peanut sauce." Again, I'll have to do some internet research and try some different sauce recipes.
But bottom line was that these were a huge success. They tasted great, and they really did provide a way to use CSA spring salad vegetables without making another salad. Anyone who likes or thinks they might like vegetable Thai spring rolls should definitely try making them. They're much easier than you might think. And they're a great way to add some fresh, raw veggies to your diet.
YUM!
No comments:
Post a Comment