I bought some of these summer rolls made by a local sushi place. Even though they are very plain, they taste so refreshing to me. I love cucumbers and avocados so maybe that's why I like these. They are like the California sushi rolls without the rice and seaweed. I also really like the spring roll wrapper that they used. It's very soft and not like the ones I have used before. I finally bought this one brand recommended by some people and I think I found the right wrapper! It tastes exactly like the one the sushi place uses.
Anyway, on a hot summer day when I don't feel like eating anything too heavy, these are great. These are also great because there is hardly any cooking involved. Making the tamago (omelette) is pretty easy.
Makes about a dozen rolls
Ingredients
1 cucumber
1 avocado
1 small package of imitation crab/lobster sticks or cooked shrimp
Tamago (Japanese omelette)
Spring Roll wrapper (Three Ladies Brand)
Spring Roll sauce (see picture)
1. Prep and cook the Tamago. See recipe below.
2. Cut the cucumber and avocado into long slices or strips (about 2 inches long, 1/2inch wide). Cut the crab or lobster sticks in half lengthwise. If using cooked shrimp, cut the shrimp in half lenthwise as well.
3. Fill a large deep bowl with hot water and put in a single sheet of wrapper into the bowl. I work with just one wrapper at a time to make it easier. Once the wrapper is soft and pliable, take out the wrapper and put it on a plate. You can put the wrapper on top of a dish cloth too, to soak up some of the water.
4. Assemble on top of the wrapper with one seafood stick or 2 shrimp haves. Top it with 1-2 strips of cucumber, 1 strip of avocado, and 1 strip of the tamago. These ingredients should all be clumped together. Then roll the right and left sides of the wrapper in, and then finally rolling into a roll. I didn't take any step by step photos this time, so feel free to reference
here on how to roll these.
Tamago Ingredient and Recipe:
3 eggs
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp light soy sauce
1. Mix all ingredients well.
2. It's kind of tricky explaining the cooking part, so I recommend just following some videos on YouTube such as this
one. I just used a regular round non-stick pan to make mine.
3. Cut the omelette into strips and set aside.
This is the lazy sauce I used for these rolls. This is also the same sauce I used (and mixed) for the rice rolls. I usually make a homemade sauce for other types of spring/summer rolls, but too lazy! Eventually, I'll make some more and different rolls, so maybe I'll post those and the sauce one of these days.
This is one of my favorite Hmong dishes. It's Hmong because I haven't eaten it anywhere else besides our Hmong household lol. I've been eating/making this ever since I was a young girl.
We had some relatives that stayed with us for a few days and one of them made this dish for us. It was the first time we've ever had this dish (my family and I) and we thought it was soooo good! It still is. I've been making it since then. The funny thing is that back in the old days even though it was available at the time such as the food processor, can opener, mop and broom, etc., my family never bought any of those "modern" appliances. We did everything the old-fashion-back-in-Laos days. Yep, we chopped meat manually, opened the cans with knives and mopped the floors with towels using our feet. Even though the convenience was out there, I still chopped this meat manually for several years until just a few years ago, I finally decided to go buy a mini-food processor. That was why I didn't like making this dish as much because it took so much time chopping the meat, but I knew it was all worth it.
Ingredients:
1 lb of beef (I normally just buy the beef for beef stew that comes in chunks at the store)
2 cloves of garlic
1/2 cup cilantro, chopped
1/2 cup green onions, chopped
1 1/2 tbsp of fish sauce,
1 tbsp of lime juice (has to be fresh, never use that other kind!)
1 tbsp of dried red chilli pepper, crushed
Method:
Spread the meat evenly on a foil-lined baking sheet. Broil at 500 degrees until brown on each side, about 20 minutes the first side and 5-10 minutes the other side. When you turn over to the other side, be sure to drain the liquid off the baking sheet. You do not want the meat to get moist. It needs to be dry, almost like beef jerky.
This is how the meat should look like after it's cooked on both sides. I let my meat cool off either still on the rack or in a dish. I don't like to run things that are hot in my food processor for fear of burning the thing. It's happened before at another household.
Once meat has been cooled off, chop (shred) the meat in a food processor until medium-finely chopped; otherwise, you can manually chop the meat with a knife.
Using a mortar and pestle, pound two cloves of garlic until bruised.
Next, throw in the meat, cilantro and green onions. Mix with a spoon.
Add the fish sauce, lime juice and pepper. Mix well with a spoon. This is where you might want to go sparingly because you might like yours less salty, sour or hot. This is just how I made mine and I like things spicy and hot!
Using the pestle and spoon, mix and pound all the ingredients together. I prefer using the mortar and pestle because it allows one to infuse all the flavors together. I don't get the same effect with any other method.
Keep pounding it a couple of times until the meat and herbs are somewhat bruised:
This dish is meant to be served at room temperature or even cold. I just like eating it with white rice and mixing the two. Tastes great with sticky rice too.
