Tuesday, July 13, 2010

The Hawthornes' Sunday Lunch. Spring Rolls. Heh.

Rosie and Mr. Hawthorne are making spring rolls for lunch today. Looks pretty good, doesn't it? I'm starting out with three different dipping sauces. First up is my version of Nuoc Nam.
My ingredients: 1/8 cup rice vinegar 1/8 cup lime juice 1/8 cup fish sauce 2 garlic cloves, minced 1 heaping TB sugar 1 Thai chili pepper, minced
The juice from my lime was just a tad over 1/8 cup.
Rice vinegar in.
Minced garlic in.
Sugar in.
Fish sauce.
Finally, I minced my little red hot firecracker.
Mix well to dissolve sugar. Here's Rosie's second dipping sauce.
Rosie's Ingredients: 1/2 cup cider vinegar 1/4 cup honey 1 TB chopped scallion 1 TB chopped red onion 1 TB diced cucumber 1 TB chopped peanuts 1 Thai chili (not shown)
Pour in the cider vinegar.
Stir in honey.
I added in my peanuts and chopped the cuke, red onion, and scallion.
I'm forgetting something.
Ah. My Thai chili.
Mince the chili and add to the mixture.
Mix well. This is one of my favorite dipping sauces. It's sweet. It's sour. And it's got cucumber and peanuts. Great for fritters. And my third sauce - sesame/soy.
Rosie's ingredients: 1/4 cup soy sauce 1/4 cup rice vinegar 1/4 tsp - 1/2 tsp sesame oil 1 TB sesame seeds, toasted
Mix all ingredients together. Start out with 1/4 tsp of the sesame oil, taste, and see if you need more. A little bit of sesame oil goes a looooong way. And here are my three sauces. These would be excellent with egg rolls, fried wontons, vegetable fritters, or fried sweet potato/squash/zucchini slices. With my sauces out of the way, I'm starting on my fillings.
Prepare sushi rice according to instructions.
Mr. Hawthorne started on the veggies. He saw this little julienne cutter at our local kitchen store and bought it.
It's a nifty gadget.
With the carrot strips done ...
... Mr. Hawthorne started on the cucumber.
Cool cuke strips.
Veggies are ready - carrot, cucumber, red pepper, and radishes.
Mr. Hawthorne boiled and drained the shrimp and they're cooling in the ice.
Here are my translucent rice paper wrappers.
Our fillings: shrimp carrot cucumber red pepper scallions radishes alfalfa sprouts and ...
... lettuce greens from my garden.
Take your spring roll wrapper and place in a dish of warm water, turning, until it's pliable enough to roll - about 20-30 seconds. If you leave it in the water too long, you'll know it, since it will be useless.
Mr. Hawthorne is starting out with a bed of lettuce and sprouts.
A few strips of carrot.
Some pepper strips, scallion, cucumber, and shrimp.
And he started rolling.
Here are all our ingredients.
Then I decided to try my hand at rolling.
And here are all our pretty little spring rolls.
Ready for my dipping sauces.
Rosie's ersatz Nuoc nam.
Sweet/sour peanut cucumber.
Soy/toasted sesame.
And here's my plate.
Here's the blurry inside of mine. Colorful, isn't it? Uh oh. Wait a minute. I think we forgot something. Anybody?
If you guessed "the rice" you would be correct. Forehead? Meet countertop.
So imagine this lovely little spring roll stuffed full with rice inside of just 6 grains I placed on top.
Oh crap. It gets even better. I forgot the damn avocado too. Fie! Now, Rosie could have doctored this post. Stuffed some rice in after the fact and you'd be none the wiser. But that's not the way Rosie rolls. You get my triumphs and you get my screw-ups too. Don't get me wrong. These spring rolls were delicious, but they would've been deliciouser with the rice. I don't know what I was thinking except that I just don't think sometimes.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

OMG! You got my ESP. Holy Carp. I've been following your blog for over 2 years but only one comment from me about Panko.

My most fave restaurant is Pho Saigon Vietnamese House of Noodles & their Spring Rolls are soooo delish. The sauces complete it. Otherwise it would be sorta meh.

Anyway, the place is closing this week & i am being forced into the kitchen. Thanks for this post. You have made my week. No, year!

Rosie Hawthorne said...

Hi Anony, glad I could help.
Don't forget the rice like I did!

Rosie Hawthorne said...

Anony, I'm not sure which ones I rolled. I know I did two and Mr. H. did the rest. And if I did the fat ones, then I'm sure I would've eaten them. (I'm not that generous.)
Still can't believe I forgot the rice.

Is this the Pho Saigon Vietnamese House of Noodles you spoke about?

http://www.phosaigonnoodlehouse.com/locations.php

Are all 10 locations closing?

zzzadig said...

Sprigs of mint and/or cilantro inside will really make the Viet Nam/Laotian spring roll sing of the home country. That's how they roll around here.

Rosie Hawthorne said...

Zzzadig, I meant to put some cilantro in and I forgot that too.