Friday, July 3, 2015

Egg Rolls with Liz

My friend Liz makes the most amazing egg rolls and brings them in to us at work. Today she came over and showed Jeannette and I how to make them. Now my belly is full and my freezer has egg rolls ready to be fried for dinners. Yum.

Liz cooks like I do. Trying to get her to give me an approximate measurement is like pulling teeth. However, I did get some generalizations.

Here's what we used for the filling:

3 lbs ground turkey
1 whole garlic bulb
1 package of Asian vermicelli noodles
about 1/2 a head of cabbage, chopped
2 shredded carrots
a 9-oz bottle of oyster sauce
4 eggs (Did you know there were eggs in egg rolls? I didn't. Seriously, I figured the wrappers were made with egg noodles or something.)
salt and pepper

 
We think the filling would also be delicious wrapped in cabbage or romaine leaves.
 
Next comes the wrapping part. According to Liz, this brand of spring roll wrappers is the best. We used about 75.
 
 
 

 
There are various techniques for wrapping up the egg rolls. Liz kindly showed us the one that 2 year old Asian children can do. I think there may have been an implied insult in there....
 
After rolling them, seal them with an egg wash. Thanks for the stellar action shots, Jeannette.
 

 

 

 
This is a good point to pull some out for the freezer to cook later.
 
Deep fry the ones you want to eat now. We used canola oil, but Liz recommends grapeseed oil as it doesn't leave a flavor residue. Buy it at the Asian food market....it's a lot cheaper.
 


 
Then she made a spicy peanut sauce.
 
This consists of: peanut butter, cilantro, lemon juice, hot red peppers, and fish sauce. I won't even attempt to give measurements. Just do it to taste.
 
You would think that I would have taken some nice amazing shot of a few egg rolls on a plate with a delicate and attractive bowl of the peanut sauce. But that would have meant that they actually ever made it to the plate.
 
Nope, we just stood around and dipped them into the peanut sauce and kept going back.
 
Great fun, and intro to a food that was relatively easy, yet I never would have tried on my own. Also, Liz shared a bit about her Hmong culture and background. Since my only knowledge of that stems from Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino, essentially that means I know nothing.