Leaning Vegetarian

Posts Tagged ‘asian’

Peach buns are one of my favorites from dim sum.  We made our own sweet red bean paste from canned adzuki beans, but if you’ve got a well-stocked asian market you may be able to find it canned and save some time.

Ingredients – Sweet Bean Paste

Two 15 oz cans azuki beans
1 cup sugar (add more or less to taste)

Ingredients – Bun Dough

1 pkg yeast
1 c. milk
2 tablespoons sugar
3 c. flour plus 1 cup for kneading
1/2 tsp salt
2 egg whites

We mashed the beans through a strainer; next time I’m going to use the food processor because everyone’s wrists were tired by the time we finished.

Add the sugar to the beans in a saucepan over medium heat and cook until it darkens a bit and becomes glossy.

Meanwhile, start the dough by heating the milk and sugar until bubbles just begin to form around the side of the pot. Let it cool to lukewarm and add the yeast, flour, and salt. Use a mixer to beat the dough while adding the two egg whites.

Knead this, adding flour as necessary to tone down the stickiness. Let it rest for a few minutes before patting it into wrappers.

I’ll let Kaela demonstrate while she fills the wraps with bean paste:

Put these into a steamer lined with a greased bit of parchment paper – I did the snowflake thing with folds and scissor cuts to add holes; a regular hole punch would have been quicker. Don’t put them this close together or they will stick together.

Steam them for 12 to 15 minutes and roll off onto a plate. To get the peachy appearance, brush them lightly with a little bit of food coloring to resemble a peach. If you want to get creative like Kaela did below, with her fish and watermelon and turtles and zombies, use a small paintbrush and food coloring.  These are best right off the stove, but they will keep refrigerated for a few days.

It’s become a bit of a tradition when I travel to see my brother that we all get together and make these egg rolls.

Why Sloan’s Lake? When I was in my early teens, there was a flea market? food court (before there were food courts)? group of craft stalls? in a big building by Sloan’s Lake in Denver. (Yeah, I know.  It’s Sloan Lake. Whatever; I’ve never heard a native call it that.) One of the vendors was frying egg rolls on the spot, and they were fabulous. Mom and I went home and recreated the recipe as closely as we could, and they do indeed taste like I’ll just have maybe one more, thanks.

It’s also a recipe that lends itself well to variation and preferences – other than a lot of ginger and a good bit of garlic, I suspect you could swap out just about everything to your taste.

Before you start, be sure you have some time free since the assembly process does take a good chunk of time. The mixed veggies can marinate overnight without problem, but once they’re wrapped they should be fried right away – they get just a bit soggy and tend to develop holes if they’re filled and then frozen without cooking.  Also they stick together like a mofo if they’re touching while they sit.

Ingredients

The only required ingredients are pretty much the cabbage, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, and green onions. Everything else is to taste or optional, and if you want to add chopped green pepper, go for it.

This makes about 40 egg rolls.

1 small/medium head of Napa cabbage or a medium Savoy cabbage
3 good-sized cloves of garlic
1 generous chunk of ginger (say an inch)
4-5 green onions
1-2 cups of whole mushrooms (something like a cup when chopped)
1 cup bean sprouts
1 8 oz. can bamboo shoots
1 8 oz. can water chestnuts
~3 Tbsp. soy sauce
Two packages egg roll wrappers
1 egg or cornstarch or flour for sealing

If you’re making it for both vegetarians and meat eaters, add

1 cup small shrimp, or
1 large chopped chicken breast or 1 cup ground chicken, or
1 cup sliced or ground pork

Preparation

To start, take a generous bit of ginger root. Now double that. Really. I use a chunk about the size of my thumb for a large mixing bowl’s worth of fillings.  Grate or finely chop this with the garlic, and add a generous splash of soy sauce. You’re aiming to get the flavor distributed without it being wet enough to cause the oil to spit at you unduly.

Chop the cabbage and green onions, slice the mushrooms, cut the bamboo shoots into small sticks, run your knife through the bean sprouts to get shorter segments. Mix this in gradually with the garlic, ginger and soy, taking care to distribute the flavors well.

If you find that the mixture isn’t fine enough to roll easily, run your knife through a few more times. I like a bit of texture to my egg roll contents; you can probably go so far as to buzz these all quickly in the food processor but I just chop roughly. Do take them down to small bits, though – rolling them is much easier if you don’t have crisp whole bean sprouts poking holes in the wrappers.

If you’re using egg to seal the wrappers, whisk an egg with a fork in a custard or teacup. If you’re using cornstarch or flour, mix a couple tablespoonsful in with the water. Use enough water to make a watery paste.

Open one package of wrappers and carefully peel one off. Cover or close the opened package – these dry out pretty quickly, so if you have extras when you’re done, seal it in something airtight.

Flip the square flat onto your work surface so the diagonal points toward you. Take a couple tablespoons of filling and place it on the corner nearest you.

Fold this corner over towards the center.

Holding that corner so it won’t unroll, tuck each side point in to the center, doing a bedsheet-hospital-corner tuck-in of the extra before those points come together.

Use your fingertips or a pastry brush (but I have filling and egg up to my elbows by the time I’m done, so why wash another implement) to smear the egg on the remaining corner, and roll up to that point. If there seem to be any gaps, dab a bit of paste on and squeeze the wrapper together. If you need to patch holes, use a bit of the final corner or a spare wrapper and some of the paste. The holes don’t really hurt anything if they’re small, but the cooking veggies will make the oil spit at you and the oil will be harder to drain.

Heat a generous half-inch of oil in a skillet (I like my cast iron pan, or a saucepan works too) until a corner of one of the egg rolls dipped in bubbles nicely.

Use a slotted spoon or tongs to place a few in the oil. Let the first side cook for a couple of minutes.

They’ll cook quickly, so be prepared to check the bottom and turn when they brown. Take them out when browned on both sides, and drain as upright as possible on a plate lined with several paper towels.

These are best hot but they freeze well – reheat in a 400° oven for crispness; they’re fine in the microwave too though they lose the crunch.

I prefer these with a bit of soy sauce and some dried yellow mustard mixed with water and a couple drops of vinegar to a thin paste. Wasabi is pretty good too. If I’m feeling particularly elegant, I’ll set up tiny sauce dishes for dipping.