After my
love affair with Tom Yum in Thailand I decided to stay in Southeast Asia and go to Vietnam. Vietnamese cuisine is famous for its healthy food, but I was happy to make an exception to that rule with these spring rolls.
Vietnamese spring rolls can be filled with many different ingredients, usually some kind of mixture of pork, shrimp, rice noodles mushrooms, onions carrots and other vegetables. This recipe is a lot simpler though, it only contains shrimp & green onions. It originates in Southern Vietnam, but I found it on a great blog called wandering chopsticks.
I love the simplicity of the recipe. It goes really well with the homemade chilly sauce. Making your own chilly sauce is a piece of cake, so please try it!
Vietnamese spring rolls are traditionally made with rice paper. But most spring rolls that we get over here are made with wheat wrappers. Spring rolls made with rice paper are uglier then their wheat paper cousins. There are two reasons for this. First of all, rice paper does not brown as much, nor as evenly as wheat paper. Second of all, when you fry rice paper it starts bubbling, and let's face it even on a spring roll bumps lumps & blisters just don't look pretty.. Do not judge them by their cover though! These ugly ducklings turned out to taste better then their pretty wheat paper cousins. The rice paper is crispy but chewy at the same time! [plus ricepaper is glutenfree]
Vietnamese spring rolls are traditionally made with rice paper. But most spring rolls that we get over here are made with wheat wrappers. Spring rolls made with rice paper are uglier then their wheat paper cousins. There are two reasons for this. First of all, rice paper does not brown as much, nor as evenly as wheat paper. Second of all, when you fry rice paper it starts bubbling, and let's face it even on a spring roll bumps lumps & blisters just don't look pretty.. Do not judge them by their cover though! These ugly ducklings turned out to taste better then their pretty wheat paper cousins. The rice paper is crispy but chewy at the same time! [plus ricepaper is glutenfree]
Hurray for Ricepaper! |
Before we start...a little safety warning here. I don’t
have a deep fryer, so I just
use a regular pan and oil.. I assume
everybody reading this blog knows that frying is dangerous, so you all
understand safety-precautions are not a bad idea. I totally recommend a real frying pan, I just don't have one. This fireman and this blog will tell you more on frying safely...
Fresh Chili sauce - Nuoc Cham
2-3 small fresh red chili
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
1 tablespoon white vinegar
1 teaspoon Sugar
2 tablespoon Fish sauce
4 tablespoon water
[additional]
1 clove of garlic
handfull of Coriander
chopped peanuts
chopped peanuts
Vietnamese Spring Rolls (makes 5) - Cha Ram
2 green onions
10 uncooked shrimp [medium size]
5 sheets of rice paper
5 sheets of rice paper
frying oil - [vegetable/ sunflower oil]
lettuce for decoration
lettuce for decoration
Kitchen towel
To make the chili sauce remove seeds from the chili and chop finely
Crush and chop the garlic
Add the chili, garlic and sugar to a small bowl
Add fish sauce, lime, vinegar and water
Mix everything together
The chili sauce is now done, set aside
Clean the shrimp
If you need some instructions for that, here's a video on how to clean shrimp
Cut the clean shrimp into small pieces about 1 cm / 0.5 inch
Chop the green onions
Mix this together with the shrimp
If you like you can add a pinch of salt
Now the fun part, putting your rolls together!
You will need:
a cutting (rolling) board
a bowl [big enough to fit the rice paper] filled with warm water
the shrimp-onion filling
a tablespoon
Place the rice paper in the bowl of water for 10 -15 seconds
until it's soft
Place one tablespoon of filling on the top of the ricepaper
Leave enough space on top of the ricepaper to fold it over
Fold the top of the sheet over the filling
Grab and make a nice tight roll
Roll all the way down
Make as many spring rolls as you can / want
Heat the oil
Make sure the oil is hot enough for frying yet not too hot. I always check by throwing in a small peace of paper, if the oil starts to bubble around it you know it's hot enough
Fry spring rolls for a couple of minutes 3-5,
Don't fry too many at once, otherwise they'll stick together [yes that's what I did...;-)]
The color of the rolls will be lighter compared to golden brown wheat based spring rolls most people are used too..
Let them rest on tissue paper romeove the excess oil...
You can make the ugly ducklings look better by serving them on a
bed of lettuce
Serve with the chili sauce [you can garnish the sauce with the coriander and some chopped peanuts]
Zeg uh, Ellen de Pellen,
ReplyDeleteWordt het niet eens tijd dat je mij te eten vraagt binnenkort? :)
Sieht gut aus, let's meet binnenkort!
XJellie
:-) ja wordt inderdaad wel eens tijd! Gaan we snel doen! XX
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