5th June 2010 - Hoi An - Vietnam - Recipe 1

Sam and I had a mini cooking course yesterday with a Vietnamese family and we learnt how to make 3 dishes! i thought i'd share the recipes on here for 2 reasons. 1 - im bound to lose the piece of paper i wrote them on before i get home and 2 - you might fancy making one of them!

1. - Vegetable Spring Rolls.

Ingredients:

Small handful Shitake Mushrooms
1/2 carrot
1/2 white onion
large chunk of Tofu
3 spring onions
1 egg
Rice Paper
1 sweet potato
1/2 Courgette

(Instead of the sweet potato and courgette we actually used this local root called Taro but i dont think its very common in the uk and it actually tastes rank! so ive substituted for sweet potato and courgette)

Seasoning:

1 teaspoon garlic roughly chopped
1 teaspoon corse black pepper
1 teaspoon sugar
pinch of salt



Chop all the vegetables into VERY VERY thin strips, no more than 7cm long, and add into a bit bowl. Add all the seasoning and mix well.

using scissors cut the rice paper into strips around 15cm wide and 25 cm long.

Whisk the egg into a seperate bowl.

put around a tablespoon of the mix onto one end of the rice paper in the centre. careful not to put to much in - buyt this is trial and error as we found out!!

roll the spring roll halfway down the rice paper, then fold the corners towards the body of the spring roll to make a parcel. finish rolling the spring roll and use a generous amount of the egg to glue it all down. place on a plate the seal facing down to use the weight of the spring roll to stick itself. repeat until mix runs out.

Heat a deeep, heavy bottomed pan with vegetable oil until its very very hot. make sure there is plenty of oil so the spring roll can float in it. Drop the spring roll into the oil and cook until both sides turn yellow, frequently turn the spring rolls. they take roughly 5- 6mins to cook.

drain on kitchen roll and serve with sweet chili sauce, soy or a hot red chili sauce....


Red chilli pepper sauce: mix into a mini sauce bowl: 1 teaspoon garlic, 1/2 teaspoon sugar, small red chilli (chopped), a quarter of a lime squeezed and a squit of fish sauce.

SERVE. YUM.