members recipes

I hope I´m not gonna get in trouble with this recipy! It´s nowhere near the original, I just wanted to have a bit of an asian touch to it, that´s why I called them asian rolls. This recipy serves 7, it´s meant as a starter.

Ingredients
for the rolls:
500 g minced beef
3 tblsp sunflower or canola oil
half an onion, chopped finely
2 cloves of garlic, chopped finely
3 little carrots, cut in short fine sticks
1 little handfull of dried shitake, chopped
1/2 tsp ginger powder
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp five spices
1 tsp paprika
2 tblsp concentrated tomato puree
5 tblsp chopped parsley
soy sauce
pepper
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28 sheets of rice paper (22 cm)
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oil to fry the rolls
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6 cucumbers
salt
pepper
plain yoghurt
olive oil
fresh dill, chopped
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mango or pineapple chutney

Method
Put the shitake in a bowl and pour some boiling water on them, just until they´re covered. Leave to rest for about 10 minutes.

Pour the oil into a pan and heat up. Add the onions, garlic, carrots and shitake (keep the liquid). Stir-fry for about 5 minutes, then remove from the pan and set aside.

Stir-fry the minced beef until it´s just closed it´s pores, use your wooden spoon to make it as crumbly as possible. Add the veg and the rest of the ingredients apart from the parsley and tomato puree.

Gently stir-fry for at least another five minutes, then add the liquid of the shitake. Keep stir-frying until the liquid is gone and all the fat comes out of the meat. That takes a few minutes. The meat should get a little crispy now, add the tomato puree to soak up the liquid and stir for another minute.

Check the seasoning and add some of the above spices if necessary. You can also add some chillie or harissa if you want. Add the parsley and leave it on the stove, stirring, for another minute, then set aside to let it cool off. It doesn´t have to be fully cold, slightly more than room temperature is enough.

Take a few fresh linnen towels and wet them. Place one on your worktop and put rice paper on it. Make sure they´re not overlapping! Place another wet towel on top and on that one some more rice paper. Continue doing this like lasagne until you´ve used up the rice papers (with my towels I get to lay 3 rice papers per layer). Finish with a wet towel. Leave to rest for 10 minutes.

Remove the top towel carefully, the rice papers are now soaked and very delicate, they´re ripping easily, so be warned! I am filling them on the wet towels because they´d get stuck on a plate.

Place one rice paper on another one so you´ve got a double layer.

Place two heaped tablespoons of filling onto the bottom third of the rice paper. Fold the sides in on the filling, then the bottom over the filling, then roll up. Set them aside on another wet towel and roll them into the towel lightly. The rice paper must not dry out!

Continue making the rolls until you´ve used up the meat and rice paper.

You can now roll the rolls into wet towels (make sure they don´t touch and you do it lightly) until you actually use them.

It´s now up to you wheather you want to just fry the rolls in a pan or deep-fry them. I always fry them in a pan because it´s less work.

In both cases heat up oil and fry the rolls from all sides until they take a nice brown colour and the filling is hot.

In the meantime prepare the salad. I am using a potato peeler to cut off cucumber pieces that look like tagliatelle. Season them with salt, pepper, yoghurt, olive oil and dill just before you serve it so the cucumber stays fresh and firm.

When everything is finished, place some cucumber salad on the plate, two rolls on top and garnish them with some chutney.