Healthy Vege Spring Rolls

Healthy Vege Spring Rolls

   October 18, 2018       Lyn Alina

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Spring rolls are crispy, light and filled with mostly vegetables suitable for snacks and side dish, and is a sibling of an Indian Punjabi favorite snack, samosa. Both of them are using the same pastry skin we called as popiah skin.

The traditional way of cooking spring rolls are to deep fry them, but the spring rolls recipe that I'm going to share with you today is the healthier version, that is the baked version of spring rolls instead of the authentic deep fried version. So, it's a good news for those who are on diet. Eheh! Besides of their oil- free version, these spring rolls are loaded with healthy vegetables. So you can munch these healthy version of spring rolls without the need to feel guilty!

The preparation of making these spring rolls are very simple, you don't have to make your own spring rolls's skin, you can easily bought them in the groceries stores.  The only thing that you need to prepare is the filling. Generally, you can make any fillings of your choice, it is not only restricted to vegetables, even chicken, prawn and meat would be perfect filling options. Cooking is about creativity, you can disobey the cooking instructions and follow your own ways. The most important thing is the end-results, that would determine whether or not you succeed in doing your cooking experiments.

I learned to make spring rolls from my mum, I can say she is a pretty good cook. Being a single mum for my elder brother and myself is definitely not an easy job, as she is being the bread winner of our family. So, I learned to cook quickly to help my mum ease her burden.  Fortunately, I love being in the kitchen, I inherit the love-to-cook genetics from both of my parents, and this is one of the recipe that my mum has taught me.

In the past, whenever we have "marhaban", we will definitely serve spring rolls to treat the Marhaban group members. Marhaban means "Welcome" or also known as Islamic caroling. During the Syawal month, the marhaban groups make house-to-house visits reciting prayers and praises for Prophet Muhammad SAW.

For the spring rolls filling preparations, lets have a look at the recipe.

Vege Spring Rolls Filling:

The ingredients:

1 medium size turnip (sengkuang) - julienned

1 Japanese cucumber - julienned

1/4 carrot - julienned

1 cup of bean sprouts - root removed

3 pieces of hard tofu - mashed

5 or 6 small onions *

3 cloves of garlic *

1 tablespoon of ground white pepper*

1/4 cup of water

1/2 anchovies stock cube (Knorr brand)

3 tablespoons of cooking oil

salt

Additionally, you can also add in bamboo shoots and long bean in your fillings. 

Methods:

1. Thinly sliced all the vegetables. Set aside.
2. Finely crushed all the ingredients marked with *.
3. Heat the oil in a wok or cooking pan. Stir fry the crushed ingredients for about 2 minutes. Then add in the anchovies stock cube, water, salt, mashed tofu and julienned carrot. Continue stirring until the carrot soften a bit.
4. Then, add in the remaining vegetables. Continue stirring to evenly mix all the ingredients. Do not overcook your filling or unless your vegetables will get soggy. We don't want to eat soggy vegetables, we want them to be crispy and tender.
5. Remove the excess liquid from the vegetables filling by transferring the filling onto a heat proof food filter and place a bowl underneath the food filter to collect the excess liquid.
6. Let the filling completely cool and the excess liquid drained before use.

How To Make the Spring Rolls:

Before you can start assembling your spring rolls, you need to prepare the gum paste. You can mix 2 tablespoons of flour with water and mix well until you get the runny consistency. You may also use white eggs for the gum paste. Then you need a damp kitchen cloth to cover the skins once you take them out of the plastic cover and have them separated. You may also need to prepare floured baking tray or you may put baking sheet on your baking tray.

1

Place the skins on a floured and dry work surface. Place the skin so that the one of the tip is facing you (like a diamond shape). Put 1 to 2 tablespoons of the filling along the edge which is facing you.

2

 Fold in the edges like you're folding a letter and roll towards the end tip.

3

4

 Brush the end tips with gum paste so that they stick neatly.

5

 Place the rolls on the floured baking tray. Brush the top of the rolls with egg wash.

6

Preheat oven at 200'C and bake your spring rolls about 15 minutes until golden brown. 

Serve warm with your favorite dipping sauce.

This recipe yields 25 pieces of spring rolls.

 There are two ways on how you can store the leftovers in freezer.  

To prevent your spring rolls from sticking to each other, the first method is to freeze the spring rolls first.  All you need to do is to arrange a single layer of the spring rolls in a baking tray, make sure to left some space in between each other and put in freezer for at least 1 hour until the rolls are firm and dry. Take them out and put inside an air tight plastic or container them put back inside the freezer.  Normally, a store bought unbaked pastry and rolls they use this method to store their products.

The second way is to wrap you spring rolls in cling wrap and put in an air tight plastic or container then keep them in the freezer.

Some tips to keep your spring rolls crispy:

# Place the baked rolls on a wire rack until they complete cool

# You must set the oven at higher temperature at least 200'C to make the rolls's skin crispier

# Don't ever keep your baked spring rolls in an air tight container unless they are already completely cooled, this is to prevent air vapor from forming and wet your rolls.