Experimental Vietnamese Spring Rolls

Vietnamese Spring Roll

After re-cooking the Cambodian Aubergine Curry and Stir Fried Spinach with Nuoc Cham for friends on Friday night we'd got the taste for Oriental food again. We'd managed to source some Shrimp paste for the curry, as in the original recipe, but were not able to include it this time because of allergies, so this also fueled the inspiration for all things oriental.
We took a drive into Manchester and to Wing Yip so I could see the delights available - Tim was the one who'd been there for the Shrimp Paste.
It really was like an Aladdin's Cave. The shelves were full of everything you could possibly need to create a Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese etc etc dish, and even though I wanted to read every label of each exciting sauce and condiment we had to focus! We picked up a couple of different Malaysian curry pastes and concentrates which were wheat free to try, some exciting Shrimp Chilli, some rice sticks, (which seem to be noodles, but there were also rice noodles, hmmm?) some Prawns and the main thing we were after, some spring roll wrappers.


Vietnamese Spring Roll Wrappers

Vietnamese spring roll wrappers are different to Chinese it seems as they are rice, as opposed to wheat. They can be used for Vietnamese fresh rolls, or summer rolls, and also deep fried to create the crispy, crunchy spring rolls we normally first think of.

We'd got some pre-packed (I know, I know!) vegetable stir fry and together with the prawns we thought that would make a decent filling. Plus the veg was half eaten and needed finishing off. We'd also got quite a bit of Nuoc Cham left from Friday so we used this to season the mixture. We decided on the deep-fried version rather that fresh as one of the core flavours for fresh rolls is mint and coriander, and rather than go shopping again we decided to use what was in the fridge.

We cooked through the veg and added the Nuoc Cham and Prawns at the last minute to heat through. We then, as per the pack instructions, soaked the spring roll wrapper in warm water for about 5 seconds until pliable. A spoonful of the stir fry mixture was then placed on the wrapper - once we'd managed to spread it out ready to roll, and perhaps not in the neatest of ways, rolled it all up.


Spring Rolls ready to go.

We heated some sunflower oil in the wok and chucked them in. First mistake. They all joined together, stuck to the bottom, burst, and pretty much mangled themselves into one big lump of rice paper and small floating bits of now deep fried veg. We did not take a picture!
After looking up a recipe for Vietnamese Spring Rolls in Rick Stein's Far Eastern Odyssey we saw where things had gone wrong. He specifies the temperature of the oil - not much use to us without a cooking thermometer, but also says to cook them so they do not touch. If we'd read that first we wouldn't have had to sacrifice the first 4 rolls. Actually we didn't really sacrifice them, as we did eat them! So we cooked the remainder very carefully. The higher temperature of the oil ensured that they didn't stick, plus we'd double wrapped a couple so as we turned them over the fragile rice wrapper didn't burst on us.
These were rather more successful.

The wrappers crisped up nicely and the Nuoc Cham dipping sauce added extra salty and hot seasoning. Lovely. The next couple we made we didn't pre-cook the filling - the prawns were cooked already, and they tasted just as good. Next time we get the Spring roll wrappers out I think we will try a recipe similar to the one in the Rick Stein book which includes minced pork as well as chopped prawns with veg and rice noodles. And also try the different option with the wrappers of the Fresh Rolls. Although we may need to practice the rolling up stage to perfect the look for Fresh Rolls really.

We will keep going back to Wing Yip for all our Oriental ingredients as everything seemed so cheap, not to mention exciting and inspirational. They also have an online store, but at first glance they don't seem to carry the full range of goods as the actual shops. Fresh produce was also notably cheap, their chillis, coriander, galangal etc all much cheaper than our normal supermarkets. The range of ingredients available will, no doubt, prompt us to being slightly more adventurous with our cooking, but I think we're a while off buying some frozen durian and some tinned abalone!

Asian Pork and Aubergine Hotpot

Why is it that whenever we want ideas for a recipe we go straight to google?  We have probably 200 cookbooks at home (in a very small house) and we don't really make use of them.  The good thing about going to google though is that very often the kind of dish you are looking for is on the BBC Good Food website.  A favourite from the website became tea for the last 2 nights running.

Asian Pork and Aubergine Hotpot with Rice

Now there is not much point in me explaining the full details as I changed very little from the original recipe, so think of this more as a recipe review.  The full details can be found here.

The first time we made it Fran felt there was too much Star Anise so this time I just used 3 (but this is personal taste as I quite liked the aniseed kick).  We didn't have Muscavado sugar so used molasses instead.  Also, we chose pork shoulder steaks rather than pork belly which we have found to be too fatty in the past.

Here is how we did it:

Brown the meat in batches and put aside (I used a colander to lose some excess fat -but then used it anyway while cooking the aubergine!)

Brown the aubergine in batches (adding a little of the pork fat as above) and put aside

Heat up the sugar till beginning to caramelise and add the pork and aubergine and coat

Add the chopped ginger, chilli and onion and cook for a few minutes

Then add the star anise and cinnamon stick with a splash of fish sauce and coriander stalks (chopped)

Add water to about a third of the dish, cover and cook undisturbed for 1 hour (200c)



When ready to serve, add lime juice, some more fish sauce, chilli and coriander

mmmm










One of the most important ingredients in this dish I think is the lime juice at the end - the flavours just dance in your mouth.  Also, although it needs about an hour to cook the pork, don't over-do it as the aubergine will become mushy.  The recipe says large chunks of aubergine - so you want to keep the shape if possible. 

Often with a stew it gets better if it is left for a while - we definitely found this as we had it two days in a row.  On the night we made it - it tasted great but had perhaps a little too much water (so be careful).  But left in the Le Creuset over night - the flavours really combined without over-cooking, the sauce thickened a little and then after heating on a medium temperature for 20 minutes was yummy the next day.  Perhaps this dish would work better if cooked in the morning - left to settle then re-heated in the evening (just a thought).

Anyway - we love this recipe - the proportions made 5 good sized helpings and will freeze.  Plus this is Gluten-Free so happy days!