December 6, 2012
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Egg Rolls From Scratch…Almost
TALES FROM THE BRAT FARM
I say almost because I refused to make the wrappers ever again. I did it once back when we lived in Glen Ellyn and learned that they were really the worst part of making them. It’s tough to get them thin enough. So the Beast bought the wrappers, bless his heart. Besides, they are much thinner and more consistent. I found a video about how to wrap them correctly and sent it to the Beast (hint, hint!). I knew how to do it already. Once you do a bunch of them for a dinner party, you don’t soon forget.
So the Beast and I spent well over an hour chopping up and dicing the bean sprouts, green onions, cabbage, garlic, mushrooms, bamboo shoots and carrots. We beat the eggs, added the soy sauce, salt, sugar and even some msg. That doesn’t go on until the cabbage, onion, garlic, shrooms, green onions, bean sprouts and carrots gets sauteed in peanut oil. You do it in small portions. Then it all goes back into the pot with the shredded bamboo shoots and the eggs, etc. go over that in a very thin stream so you can evenly distribute it. After it cools down a bit, I rolled it up and the Beast cooked them in peanut oil. It was delish!
I haven’t really given you the whole recipe or even all the ingredients but you can find a bunch of different ones on the internet. We made ours with shrimp, chopped up, but they are usually made with a combination of pork and chicken. You can even add shrimp to the mix. It all depends on what you personally like. YouTube even has step-by-step instructions (using pork and chicken) that I found was very informative.
The one thing that was mind-blowing about the recipe the Beast decided he wanted to try was the mushrooms. He bought them dried and we had to rehydrate them for a half hour or so. It didn’t look like much but holy cow! I had used a small bowl to soak them in water and they blossomed to these HUGE really wavy and curly mushrooms. The dried ones made me wonder if we would get a whole cup of the chopped up results. Instead, just two of them gave me more than a cup and there were still four left!
The results were really great! The egg rolls were crisp and very tasty. We could have cooked the filling just a little less and cooked the whole egg roll to a little darker color but that’s our personal thoughts. We did cook the ones AFTER our initial ones that we ate until they were very golden in color and that was perfect. I was worried about the carrots not being cooked much so that was why we cooked the filling more than we should have. We didn’t consider that their deep frying would cook the filling, too. Oh well. Live and learn. It’s been a while for me…..a LONG while since I made them.
Oh, Chewlee went with the Beast to Walmart today and returned the Chapstick to the manager and told him she was really, really sorry but she forgot she had to pay. He told her he was glad she had returned it and he hoped she learned something from this all. She became mute at that time and just shook her head yes. When she came back to the house, she was her usual happy self. She got a BIG smiley face today because she not only aced her math test but she did it faster than anyone else in the class. She also did great on her reading. The teacher let her pick a prize out of the Treasure Chest so she was very, very cheerful over that.
I need to get this posted. Love you all and I hope your week has been great. Be happy!
