Leluu’s Spring Rolls
Everybody loves Spring Rolls! Its a crowd pleaser. Its like an eastern pie – you can add whatever you want to inside as a filling. But of course, we don’t recommend that you see it like that!
Like everything, the more love you put into them the more rewards you will reap. Choosing cheap ingredients is tempting but not everybody loves tasteless, greasy or empty spring rolls.
On our trip to Vietnam we discovered a new rice paper that looks like lace. This gives a wonderful crispy texture that is light and delicate, leaving you to devour full flavour of what is inside.
You can make spring rolls with all types of rice paper: regular rice paper (traditional, does not remain crispy for very long), pastry paper (crispy, crunchy – very nice) or lace paper (delicate, crispy without being crunchy, beautiful texture).
Ingredients: to make 100 spring rolls full of love.
-Rice paper (dip in warm water long enough to cover- a couple of seconds) only do one at a time!
-500g minced pork
-1.5kg peeled, devined king prawns – blizt gently so that there are still big chunks of prawns
-3 cans tinned crab (squeeze all juice out)
-500g julienne carrots (squeeze all juice out)
Reason for squeezing out juices is so that your spring rolls do not get soggy.
-2 handfuls of dry black fungus mushrooms (better to buy finely sliced version – soak for an hour)
-1 bulb garlic
-1 handful of shallots
-3 portions pack of glass noodle (soak in cold water for less than 10 mins – keep eye that it does not get soggy then cut into inch lengths)
-Pork flavour granules
– 2ish teaspoons of sugar (adjust later)
TIP: If using pastry sheets, you should par fry until lightly golden brown. When ready to serve it takes about 3 mins in the deep fryer.
If you are using lace paper, it does not take as long to fry – 3 mins only until crispy and golden but the paper is very delicate and you will have to work fast and carefully. Roll these on the day you want to eat them.
FREEZING: You can keep some in the freezer and impress those unexpected guests or have some whenever you fancy it. We have not put our spring rolls in the freezer, be careful if you do depending on if you are buying fresh prawns or frozen prawns. We would only recommend cooked rolls to be frozen then fried til golden before serving.
The secret to great spring rolls is the sauce. However, the problem is I have never measured how I have made it, because every time I make it, I do it from memory and from tasting and intuition but here are the ingredients you can try to master yourself:
Hot water (half), Fish Sauce (half), Sugar (to taste), Lime, Garlic, Chilli – blend together
Mix it all together and see how you go – adjust levels to get the perfect balance of salty, sweet, sour and hot!
Traditionally, a spring roll is placed in some salad leaf with corriander, rolled up, dipped into fish sauce and then eat. It is also great with vermincelli and salad.
