Fresh Spring Rolls

Oh Fresh Spring Rolls, are you Thai? Are you Vietnamese? Are you some sort of creation thought up by crazy Americans and passed off as authentic Asian cuisine? Tell me your secrets!

Though I have no idea where these tasty treats hail from, and after at least three minutes of exhaustively googling them I came up with no conclusive evidence, I still love them. The first time I had them was on one of my first dates with Mr. TA before we got married. He really likes Asian cuisine, all kinds, and he took me to this really cute little Thai place in Washington. We had Phad Thai, Chicken Satay, Mangoes with Coconut Sticky Rice, and Fresh Spring Rolls. Everything was delicious and Mr. TA and I were well on our way to everlasting mushiness - or more typically driving each other as crazy as possible. We like to keep things fresh.

So, more importantly, fresh spring rolls are a rice paper wrapper filled with lettuce, an assortment of herbs, chicken, and shrimp. Many recipes also require the addition of other vegetables like carrots or cabbage and many times noodles are added. I prefer to stick to the style we first had on our date, so I use only lettuce, basil, cilantro, mint, chicken, and shrimp. Top it off with some out of this world peanut sauce and you're good to go.



Speaking of peanut sauce, talk about a crapshoot when you're looking for a good recipe, eh? I've made peanut sauce countless times, and I've never been quite satisfied with any of them. They're either too sweet, too peanutty, too spicy, or too oily. I like my peanut sauce to contain a myriad of flavors - heat, sweetness, spice, and of course the peanuts. It needs to blend effortlessly into a flavor that complements the dish it's adorning, not covering it up. Peanut sauce isn't really an Asian creation (invented by crazy Westerners), so it's little surprise it's now basically the Asian ketchup. We throw it on everything, and instead of adding an additional level of flavor, it masks everything else until all we can taste is the peanut sauce.

I'll pass.

That's why I attempted to create my own recipe completely from scratch. Usually when I attempt something like this it ends in an Epic FAIL. This time, it actually worked. It's the best peanut sauce I've ever had - restaurant or otherwise. It was one of those recipes that as I was mixing everything I knew that it was either going to be the most amazing thing I've ever created - or lump of goo not fit for the neighbor's cat that keeps pooping in my flower beds.

And believe me, at this point I'd feed that cat all sorts of weird crap. That's right, poop in your owners house - not my chrysanthemums.

I've heard that working with some Asian ingredients and techniques can be a little intimidating for some, so I've included some step-by-step photos to guide through the process. They're really so simple, I can't think of any reason for not trying them.

Fresh Spring Rolls

Makes 6

For the Rolls:

6 sheets rice spring roll wrapper (available at any Asian market)
6 leaves green or red leaf lettuce (romaine and iceberg are too firm, they may tear the wrapper)
1 cup cilantro leaves
1 cup mint leaves
1 cup basil leaves
12 shrimp (preferably 25-30 ct.), raw, shelled and deveined
10 oz chicken (1 medium boneless, skinless breast), cut into small strips about 1 oz each
4 tablespoons butter, divided

For the Peanut Sauce:

1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
1 teaspoon red curry paste
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon palm sugar, grated
1/2 tablespoon rice vinegar
1/3 cup coconut milk

In a heavy bottomed skillet over medium-high heat melt two tablespoons butter. Add the shrimp, season to taste with salt and cracked pepper. Cook until pink and opaque throughout. Remove from skillet and set aside to cool. Melt the remaining two tablespoons butter and add the chicken strips. Cook completely. Remove from skillet and set aside. Turn off the heat, but keep the pan on the burner (gas stoves may require lowest flame). Using the residual heat, melt the peanut butter for the peanut sauce, in effect deglazing the skillet with the peanut butter. Add remaining ingredients, combine thoroughly and let meld for at least two minutes - adjust to taste if necessary. Remove from skillet into a ramekin or other small dish and set aside.

For assembling the rolls:

Start with your rice wrappers



This is what they look like when they're dry, out of the package



In a wide, shallow dish ( I use a large pie plate) fill halfway with hot water (from the tap is fine). Soak the wrapper for about 45 seconds, lift it out of the water carefully and let excess water drip off. Now it will look like this:



A quick tip, dry to keep your work area as dry as possible. It needs to be moist, but if the area is soaking wet the wrapper will stay soaking wet too - and it needs to start to dry out a little as you're working or when you start the rolling it will be too slippery to stick to itself. Keep a kitchen towel handy and wipe down the surface after every roll.

Start the assembly by placing two cooked shrimp, side to side in the center of the wrapper.



On top of the shrimp, layer the herbs in equal amounts and top with a strip or two of the cooked chicken.



Top with a lettuce leaf. Now, start to roll it like a burrito. Flip the edge nearest you over the top of filling, pull taught, and fold in each side.



Now just keep rolling until it's sealed.



If you're awesome you end up with the shrimp showing through the top of the wrapper. However, I am not awesome, and after rolling all six of mine I still didn't get one to work properly - so they look all plain and boring like this:



Now you're all finished. You can serve them whole or cut on the diagonal.



Top with the peanut sauce, but not too much...



Now devour at will.

Boiled Peanuts

One of Mr. TA's (I'm shortening it, Totally Awesome is just way too long for someone as lazy as me) favorite snack foods when he was a child was boiled peanuts. He often tells me stories about how he and his dad would get boiled peanuts from roadside stands in Florida. He's asked before if I would make them for him, but I thought it was going to be some long, arduous process that involved some crazy Southern secret ingredients. It turns out it's pretty much as easy as it sounds, boiling peanuts. Mr. TA said the people at the stands would sometimes have different flavors, curry, spicy, Cajun, etc. I haven't quite gotten that far yet, but I bet boiling them in some Tony Chachere's seasoning would be pretty bad ass. That stuff tastes great on just about anything.

Mr. TA likes to eat his peanuts just as they are - crack open the shell and suck the mushy peanut out - but I guess it's a pretty traditional Southern habit to pop the peanuts into a bottle of cola and chug 'em down together. I'm assuming there's some chewing of the peanuts involved in there somewhere. I was introduced to this crazy custom by my mother's husband, C. C's from Texas originally and has all sorts of interesting habits. C and I were headed somewhere on some road trip to do something (there are too many occasions similar to this to pinpoint exactly what we were all doing) and stopped at a gas station to get fuel and snacks. He bought a packet of salted peanuts and a bottle of Coke and proceeded to empty the peanuts into the Coke bottle. I thought he was a friggin' crazy person. Who the hell does that? Puts peanuts in Coke. That's just weird.

But, I was recently reading "Pig Perfect" by Peter Kaminsky and he also related the Southern custom of putting peanuts in cola. So I suppose it's not quite as crazy as I thought...

C made me try it before I nay-sayed it too badly, and it's really pretty good. Not something I'd go out of my way to try again, but I wouldn't kick Coke and peanuts outta bed for eatin' crackers, know what I mean?

It's extremely easy to make, and if you've got a Southern boy, or an East Coast man with Southern roots like Mr. TA, then these are really too convenient to not make for them.

Just make sure you drink lots of water. My god, what is with Southerners and adding unhealthy amounts of everything bad for you to every single recipe they make? There's enough sodium in these bad boys to bloat you up like a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon.



Boiled Peanuts

Makes 1 lb.

1 lb. raw (green/young) peanuts
1/2 cup kosher salt
6 quarts water

Boil the peanuts and salt in the water for about 3 hours, or until peanuts are soft all the way through. Pull one out, let it cool, peel it, and try the peanut after about 2 hours. Repeat every 15 minutes until peanuts are all tender.

These must be eaten same day, if not they'll get all slimy and smelly. If desired you can reserve the cooking liquid and keep the peanuts in the liquid in a jar in the refrigerator for no more than three days.