Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Asian Interlude - Rolls

The Engineer and I had some homemade Asian-inspired meals recently. The Engineer made sushi rolls (which he hadn’t done in a really long time). As you can see, we could not procure sushi-grade fish for this meal, so we ended up with a simple fare of smoked salmon, avocado and cucumber. It was enough to get back in the swing of things (we fully intend to get our hands on sushi-grade ingredients in the future). I’m posting a series of simple step-by-step photos for creating the rolls; you can get recipes for the rice online, as well as videos. Suffice it to say that we really appreciated our meal – and at least we knew exactly what was going into it, which isn’t true in many restaurants.







We also tried Vietnamese-style spring rolls. They are quite simple, and you can fill them with whatever you want; we had a veggie version here. Start by putting one (ONE) sheet of rice paper in a bowl of warm water to soften, then transfer it to a plate and put your fillings on top. Fold the top flap, then the sides, and roll it toward you to close it. The trick to rolling these is to do it with just the right tension: too hard and they’ll tear, but too loose and they’ll fall apart. You can see from my finished picture that some are looking better than others – you’ll get better as you make them, don’t worry. We served them here with a carrot-ginger sauce that I really liked (though be warned it’s quite vinegary, which is an acquired taste) as well as with a great peanut sauce (though next time I make it, I might just not add water and skip the stovetop altogether).






3 comments:

Anonymous said...

So what's the rule about people showing up in your pictures?

Amélie said...

Well, we're still working out the étiquette of the whole blog thing... I've basically decided I don't want to post faces, to keep some privacy. You'll notice that the most "people" shots I have are in the post about Vermont, and even then you can't really make out anyone's face. I realize I've got my face in the icon at the top right. I want to change that, but I just never got around to taking a picture that represents me without showing my face.

The Engineer said some part of me should appear at some point on my blog, so he took the pictures of my hands where I'm making the spring rolls. Before that, I think my thumb had appeared in the post about cheese soufflé, but that's about it!

Anonymous said...

I think you should definitely replace the icon of your face with a picture of your thumb. It's the first time you appeared in your blog, so build on it.