Rice Paper Rolls

In the last year I have, how do you say, porked up. So I'm trying to eat better.  In truth, what I should be doing is eating less, but I've opted for eating better. So today, I made a healthy dinner. I made rice paper rolls. I love this meal. It's quick to make, it's tasty, and it's messy and sticky and fun to eat.

Ingredients:

Fillings

• Rice papers
• Vermicelli noodles 
• Ice-berg lettuce, shaved
• Cucumber, julienned 
• Coriander
• Mint
• Beef (I used porterhouse steak)
• Ginger
• Garlic
• Chilli
• Soy

 Amazing dipping sauce

• Crunchy peanut butter
• Hoisin sauce
• Soy
• Sesame oil
• Ginger
• Chilli
• Brown sugar

Ok, so here's what you do. Prepare your salad ingredients. Shave your lettuce, chop your cucumber, pluck the tasty little leaves from your herbs.

 

Then soak your vermicelli in hot water and drain them. Grate a generous lump of ginger and finely chop the chilli and garlic. Trim any fat from your steak, and finely slice into stir fry pieces. Heat some sesame oil in a wok and toss the garlic, chilli and ginger with the beef. Add a splash of soy and cook the beef until the all the pink has just disappeared.

Finally, prepare your sauce. Put all the things into a pot. If you measure them, you're doing it wrong. Just go with what looks good, until it becomes a sticky dark mass and tastes delicious on your finger.

Put everything into appropriately sized bowls. Fill another large bowl with hot water. You'll need this to soak your rice papers one at a time. Then assemble all the yummy elements and roll it all up nice and tight, stick some sauce on it, and shove it in your face.

NB These can easily be made using any kind of filling you like. Prawns are excellent, and puffed tofu makes a beautiful vegetarian/vegan version.

Further NB I ate six. That's not so many, right?... Right?

Cabbage and Tofu Dumplings

I have never met anyone who doesn't love dumplings. In Melbourne, dumplings is usually synonymous with low-rent Chinatown asian dumplings. However Leanne gave me A World of Dumplings last year, which reminded me that dumplings are really just dough with stuff, and feature in just about every cuisine in every continent. I will be delving into pierogi's soon. Watch this space.

But this weekend dumplings meant Asian dumplings. I took inspiration from a recipe for Korean dumplings, and their half-moon structure, and then just went and added whatever I felt like to them. And this happened largely because I was at the supermarket and I hadn't checked the recipe closely. So here's what I used:

Ingredients (dumplings)

• Tofu
• Cabbage (about 1/4 head)
• Chilli
• Garlic
• Ginger
• Spring onions (about 5)
• Mirin
• Salt and pepper
• Wheat-based dumpling skins
• Oil for frying

Ingredients (dipping sauce)

• soy sauce 
• fish sauce 
• rice wine vinegar
• chilli
• sesame oil

To make the dumplings, chop the cabbage quite thin, and throw all the dry ingredients in your mixer. Don't bother chopping the ginger and garlic more than roughly, the mixer will take care of it all. Reflect for a moment on how much you love your mixer.  Mix until crumb sized, and add a splash or two of mirin. Mix through again.

That was the quick and easy part. Now you need to construct your dumplings. This is the slower easy part. Enlist the help of anyone who might be milling around, hoping to eat your dumplings later. Because you read The Little Red Hen as a child, and it really spoke to you. Also because making dumplings is fun, and you know ace people who are always willing to help out.

Assemble everything you'll use: your dumpling mix, dumpling skins, a plate lined with baking paper so they don't stick, a little finger bowl of water, and a tasty cold beer.

Take a dumpling skin. Place a small teaspoon's worth of filling in the centre. Dip your fingers in the water and wet the edges of the dumpling skin. Take two sides of the skin and pinch together over the filling. Seal it across into a half moon. Crimp the edges and pinch them together firmly - this will help seal the dumpling and it also looks fancier.

Heat a few tablespoons of oil in a non-stick pan on a medium heat, and brown them on both sides.

Then mix up your sauce by throwing everything in a bowl.

Dip your dumplings in your sauce and forget entirely that you were going to serve some Chinese greens with them. Turns out the two hungry men you're feeding wont mind. Also, it turns out that one packet of dumpling skins will turn into enough dumplings to feed three people on a Saturday night. It also turns out that beers mixed with Stone's ginger wine isn't gross at all, and is a great dumpling accompaniment, and will assuredly get you feeling a little silly. Cheers for that, Grover!