spring rolls

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Pan-fried rice paper rolls with crab

1. september 2008 in oppskrifter by Christiane | No comments

 I’ll  add my changes to the original recipe, as it differs quite a lot from the original recipe I found at this site

 Pan-fried crab & vegetable rice paper rolls

 My beautiful rice paper rolls with dipping sauce

Ingredients

  • 1 carrot – grated (or you could cut it with a julienne iron/in a julienne style manually, I think I will try that the next time, the carrot got too mushy for my taste)
  • 1 1/2 cup finely chopped cabbage - I used chinese cabbage, worked out well but I prefer the regular cabbage
  • 1 spring onion, finely sliced
  • 1 clove of garlic, grated
  • 1 tablespoon finely grated fresh ginger - I just used the same fine grating iron for the carrot, ginger and garlic
  • 6 rice paper sheets - I used the small ones, so to use up all the stuffing I guess I used 12 sheets.
  • 6 crab sticks - I used the frozen ones, as I know that I’ll never eat a whole bucket of crabsticks before they go bad anyway
  • 2 tablespoons of oil - I used rape seed oil, but any oil suitable for high temperatures will do, like peanut oil
  • 2 tablespoons soy sauce
  • 1 teaspoon sesame oil
  • 1 tablespoon hoisin sauce - I was all out and didn’t find any in the local supermarket, so I made my  own dipping sauce (turned out ok, but not a favourite):
  • 1 tablespoon oyster sauce
  • 1 tablespoon runny forest honey (mmh, tangy and not too sweet)
  • 1 tablespoon soy sauce
  • 1 teaspoon sweet chili sauce
  • 1 teaspoon sesame oil
  • a couple of tablespoons of water, for thinning it out, after taste
  • a whole lotta sesame seeds, by accident

Preparations

I mixed all the vegetables, let the rice paper soak in hot water for 15 seconds and drip off excess water, and placed about 1 tablespoon of filling in one corner of the rice paper sheet. Placed one crabstick on top of the veggie-mix, folded in the sides of the rice paper, and rolled it up carefully. CAREFULLY! I think I ripped three of the sheets; letting them soak too long makes them too fragile to handle, while too short soaking time also makes them un-managable. Heated the soy oil in a normal frying pan at medium-low heat, and fried the rolls until they had a nice light-brown colour on all four sides, about 8 minutes in total frying time. Let them drip off as much excess oil as possible on a kitchen towel (reduce the calories!). I mixed the dipping sauce in between the frying, but I think the next time I will add a clove of garlic and some ginger to the dip (and off course some hoisin-sauce, when I’ve gotten around to buy some at a chinese store). 

If you need a step-by-step instruction on how to handle rice paper rolls you can find a good one here:

How to handle rice paper wrappers

And now…in english!

31. august 2008 in Meg og mitt liv, Ukategorisert by Christiane | No comments

As my Norwegian readers know (if there are any, except for my boyfriend), I’ve just started my masters in biology. I’ve finally decided on the thesis I want to do: Personality development of chicken. – Behaviour biology, that is. When I’ve finished writing the thesis, which I can either write in english or in norwegian, I can choose to make a scientific article out of it and publish it. Then I would have to re-write it and translate it into english, so I’ve chosen to write my thesis in english. So I’ve started writing this blog in english – for the practise first and foremost, besides, I’ve accumulated a couple of non-Norwegian friends over the years (thank Darwin!), so I thougt it would be cool for them to be able to read my blog.

So, whats new since the last post? Tore has finally booked tickets for his flight home from Longyearbyen, Spitzbergen, where he’s been doing the fieldwork for his masters – in biology as well (we met in the first semester). He’ll be back the 15th of September, just two days before my birthday! I can hardly wait to see him, it’s been a month since I last saw him. Maybe we can go to this restaurant; http://www.bocata.no/dinner/. We ate there two years ago, on Tore’s birthday, and the food was absolutely delicious! My favourite, well, our favourite (I know it sounds gooey but it’s true), was Crispy Duck with Chinese pancakes, cucumber, spring onions and hoi-sin sauce…I’m salivating all over the key board just thinking about it. I tried making it once, but it just didn’t turn out the same. 

In the meanwhile, I’ve been busy with lectures, having hardly any time for cooking. I’ve been dealing with the beginning of a cold all weekend, and haven’t had energy for anything else than to watch tv..and eat (and do the laundry, because i HAD to). Tonight the pre-cold started to loosen its grip (I hardly ever get really sick), so I treated myself to some homemade spring rolls – they gave me a feeling of having accomplished something today, kinda making up for the bunch of reading material that got neglected during the weekend. Anyway, I can’t really say how they tasted, because by the time I had finished them, my nose got all…clotted, and I wasn’t able to smell or taste anything. But I think they were tasty, I love the combination of ginger and garlic. And they contain crab sticks! I love crab sticks, and I love fun, good recipes for getting those recommended fish meals every week. I found a nice recipe on the internet, but I adjusted it quite a lot; to my taste and to what I could find in the supermarket, for instance; they didn’t have cabbage!  I had to settle for Chinese cabbage. Which isn’t that bad a replacement, but I really had my mind set on cabbage. Darn. By the way, did you know that cabbage is full of natural toxins ? My ‘general toxicology’ teacher would go on and on about how toxic it is, luckily it’s only deadly to insects, but it makes you think..one of the Nnational dishes is “Sheep and cabbage stew”, which I love, but luckily people mostly just eat it a couple of times in the autumn..maybe that’s a good thing. But back to Asian cooking, here’s the Vietnamese spring rolls, with the dipping sauce:

Although I couldn’t quite taste them, the texture was good, I love rice paper wrappers. I’ll put my take on making them on the site called “Oppskrifter” (=recipes in Norwegian) tomorrow. - I’ll change the layout of this site soon, I just have to get around to choose some nice photos to make a header of.