Crispy Vietnamese Spring Rolls

Cooking adventure number #3 – Crispy Vietnamese Spring Rolls

For my third main ingredient my sister selected ‘chicken’. I researched and selected three recipes including chicken bites, chicken and vegetable risotto and Vietnamese spring rolls. All recipes look delicious and all the recipes seemed easy to make however, I chose Vietnamese spring rolls because this recipe is a part of my culture and one of my favourite dishes. I decided to not use the website’s version of spring rolls and use my mum’s she has cooked spring rolls for parties, dinners and for a treat and I know they are magnificent so I want to know how to cook like my mum. The ingredients for the ‘crispy spring rolls’ are:

Spring roll pastry

Carrots

Egg Whites

Potatoes

Bean Vermicelli

Onion

Salt

Pepper

Sugar

Chicken Mince

Home – made chicken mince

Before I started preparing of the ingredients, I decided to make my own chicken mince. Why when I buy it ready made from the butchers? From the butchers, it’s hard to know which part of the chicken was used to make the chicken mince and also how much fat has been added to the chicken mince. By making my own chicken mince, I knew exactly which part of the chicken I was using and how much fat was added. The answer – zero fat! 

I decided to use chicken drumsticks with skin-off. I used this part this part as the drumstick is generally tastier as it is not the leanest part of the chicken and retains flavours really well. If you wanted a healthier option, it is best to use chicken breast because it is low in fat and it’s very lean. 

I had to remove the skin and also de-bone the chicken drumsticks. These are the skinless chicken drumsticks which were peeled. It looks like chicken breast but there’s a bone at the end of each chicken. 

This is me deboning the chicken drumsticks. Before I started separating the meat and the bone, I removed the veins and arteries from the chicken because they make me sick when I cut them open. Since my cousin wasn’t here yet, my sister took the photo which still looked good but not like some photos from my first two cooking adventure.

These are the chicken meat ready for the last step in making chicken mince; mincing.

These are the bones from the chicken drumsticks. Instead of throwing them in the bin, I decided to keep these so my mum can make a soup stock with the bones. The veins/arteries & skin were thrown out.

This is my sister mincing the chicken meat. My sister and I decided to use the food processor rather than the meat mincer because we didn’t know how to use it and it’s a long process of setting the machine up and cleaning it when use finish using it. I was too nervous of using the food processor so my sister took over my position and I was the video recording person.  My sister had to ‘process’ the chicken three times to make sure every piece was minced to the right consistence. This is the video of how the chicken was minced or ‘processed’ for the very first time.

After 45 mins of making our own chicken mince, it actually looked better than the butchers’ chicken mince although it wasn’t actually minced in the mincer. There were some veins left in the chicken but luckily, it didn’t burst open and I removed it from the mince. Buying the ready-made mince was $7 at the butcher and buying 1kg of drumsticks was $5 so we saved $2. Although it was a bit more effort than I expected, I was really pleased that we made our own chicken mince.

Once we finished making the mince, my cousin came home from work and started taking brilliant photos like this one of me putting in onion into the mince. The onion had to be finely diced and then all the juices of the onion ringed out. This is so the spring rolls didn’t end up soggy once they have been fried. The aroma of onion and mince was amazing!!!

Once I mixed the onion into the mince, I put in salt, sugar, pepper, carrot, potatoes and bean vermicelli into the mince. The carrot took forever to prepare for the mince, first I had to peel the skin of 4 carrots, then grating them which made my arm hurt and then ‘wringing’ the grated carrot so the water can drip out of the carrots. My sister noticed that the ingredients weren’t ‘blending’ into the mince so she told to use my hands more to mix the mince and ingredients. Although it’s messy I think the best way of mixing these ingredients is to use your hands rather than a wooden spoon.

After a few minutes of mixing the mince, the filling of the spring rolls was done; it was nice and even, no lumps and it was just what I imagined it to be like.

Making the spring rolls had to have mum’s technique of using triangles and squares: triangles are the filling’s pastry and the squares are the second layer of filling pastry. The triangle and squares each needed to have ten sheets (the packet had thirty sheets) and folded into its shape.

Once the pastries have been folded, it was then cut and peeled. It was a long process but once I stopped looking at my watch, time flew by and I finished really quickly.

When I was younger, seeing my mum make spring rolls look easy and I didn’t understand why she would always tired when all she would do is put the filling on the triangle, roll it, put in on the square then roll it and just before she finished rolling, she would put egg whites on the end and it would stick. Now, looks can be deceiving; depending how much filling was important; too much and it will not roll probably and too little and it will look like you just rolled pastry. My first attempt had too much filling and exploded (I couldn’t wrap the spring roll neatly) but I should learnt to use only ¾ of a teaspoon. Placing the filling roll onto the square was easy but the way I rolled made my mum very agitated. She said to stop ¼ of the way, fold the right side then left and roll it. It was difficult but I learnt a lot of things for that process and I was tired after making the rolls. I then used the egg white to seal the spring roll.

The springs rolls being stacked the way my mum like it. My cousin’s photography skills really showed in this photo. My cousin’s sister, mum and I made 100 springs rolls altogether. If we don’t use the spring rolls, mum puts them into sandwich bags and freezes them for the next time we eat spring rolls.

Next step was to fry the spring roll. The spring rolls are best to be fried in vegetable or canola oil. My mum told me that olive oil is too fragrant to fry spring rolls.

My dad taught me a trick in testing if the oil was hot enough for the spring rolls . This trick was taught from a local fish and chip shop where the owner used a small amount of rice noodles and dropped it in the oil. If the rice noodle cooked and rose to the top quickly, the oil is hot and ready to go. I like using large pieces of noodle because the shapes the noodles create are so interesting. The taste of fried noodles is plain but it looks like rice crackers. The video shows the progress in testing the oil.

These are the very first batch of spring rolls that are about to be fried in the hot oil. Once the spring rolls were in the fryer, oil started to splatter on the stove, on the floor and on my arm. It burned for a few seconds.

The smell of oil and spring roll being fried was going around the kitchen at the time when this photo was taken. My mum taught me a technique in frying the best spring rolls. Her method of explaining was difficult so I’ve put in a simpler way:

Step 1: When the spring rolls are placed in the fryer, put heat to high.

Step 2: When the ends of the spring rolls turn golden brown, put heat to medium.

Step 3: When the spring rolls are between light yellow to golden brown, take all springs rolls out (remember, the spring rolls are still cooking because of the oil still soaked in)

This was the very first one I took out of the deep fryer and it looked amazing!!! My cousin’s photography made the photo look like a professional. I used the chopstick method which took longer to take out each spring roll which meant the spring rolls were turning browner by the minute until my mum gave me a strainer which grabbed every single spring roll out of the deep fryer in one shot.

To plate up, I washed some fresh iceberg lettuce and Vietnamese mint, which is how they serve spring rolls at Vietnamese restaurants. It took around 15 minutes to plate up with the sweet chilli sauce. Traditionally, spring rolls is served with dipping fish sauce however we had none left at home and used  sweet chilli sauce as a replacement. Overall it was a delicious dish; the aim was to make my mum satisfied with the spring rolls. The ones she ate were a little bit overcooked because of the chopstick method but she liked it. I learnt a lot of techniques in making spring rolls so I’ll use those skills my mum taught me when I make more spring rolls for parties or for dinner with my mum. I can’t wait for the next recipe because this is going to be FUN!!!

This recipe was taken from my mum’s knowledge

Q: If you had chicken as your main ingredient, what would you make?

Answer this question in the comments section.

Delicious Entrée Corn Pastries

Cooking adventure number #2 – Delicious Entrée Corn Pastries – ‘corn & ham quiches’ and ‘chicken & corn puffs’

For my second main ingredient, my cousin selected ‘corn’. I researched and selected four recipes including corn & ham quiches, chicken and corn soup, corn chowder and corn mini quiches. All four recipes looked appealing and weren’t time-consuming however, I chose corn & ham quiches because the combination of ham and corn were unusual and the recipe had a 5 out of 5 rating.

I decided to cook a second dish as I recently went to a party and entrée were serving these football-shaped pastries, which had chicken and CORN. It tasted amazing and I wanted try recipe for my project. I was excited to make two different pastry recipes with the one main ingredient… CORN!

I decided to call my entry Entrée Corn Pastries – ‘corn & bacon quiches’ and ‘chicken & corn puffs’ because pastries are always a winner at parties!  The ingredients for the ‘delicious entrée corn pasties’ are:

Corn and Bacon quiches

Corn

Egg

Bacon

Onion

Cheddar Cheese

Puff Pastry

Melted butter (to grease pan)

Bacon (replaced ham because bacon has a stronger taste)

Chicken and corn puffs

Corn

Mince Chicken

Onion

Puff Pastry

Parsley

Bread crumbs

Carrot/Peas

Salt and pepper

Milk

It took me 30 minutes to prepare all the ingredients for the two recipes. This included measuring, cutting and washing all ingredients into bowls and plates and the presentation for the photo. Since this recipe was short, the preparation was quicker than my previous recipe.

This is the main ingredient, corn being poured into the chicken mince. I used fresh corn cobs instead of canned corn as fresh corn is sweeter and juicer. When I was “kneading” the mince, I was told that I was kneading too hard and was actually massacring the chicken, so I kneaded the chicken mince and corn more gently.

I combine the chicken mince, corn, parsley, carrots, peas, salt and pepper together to begin making the mixture for the corn pastry. I also added in the onion and bacon which I had fried lightly and set aside to cool. The onion needs to be cooled or else when you add the onion to the chicken mince it will cook the chicken mince. There were great smells and flavours from the mince as the onion and bacon were lightly fried. I also added breadcrumbs to soak up the moisture and juice from the chicken mince. Without the breadcrumbs, the pastry could be soaked in the moisture and juice from the chicken mince and other ingredients while it is cooking in the oven which could cause the pastry to be soggy.

I set aside the chicken mince mixture and started preparing the pastry. I had to measure 

and cut the puff pastry so each piece could fit my chicken and corn puff filling tool. At first, the puff pastry was getting stuck to the tool and I couldn’t peel off the pastry without ruining the shape. I quickly worked out that the puff pastry was a little wet from being defrosted so a bit of plain flour might fix the problem. Thankfully it worked. Working out how much meat filling you put in the tool was difficult; too little and all you’ll taste is pastry and too much and the pastry won’t stick together. At my attempt, there wasn’t enough filling so the pastry felt a bit airy inside. The more pastries I made I learnt the right measurement was one full teaspoon of mince mixture was enough.

Here are some of the finished uncooked pastries, some of them were big and some of them were small. The square pastries were pressed together by using a fork. There were lots of unused bits of puff pastry which I put together and rolled into one big sheet of puff pastry. I then brushed the pastries lightly with some milk to create a more golden colour. I was scared that the re-used and re-rolled puff pastry wouldn’t puff up. It did puff up but didn’t we used the left over pieces of puff pastry. Once we ran out of pastry, we used the left over pastry but when we tasted the pre-made pastry and the re-used pastry, the re-used pastry was much harder than the pre-made but it was still puffy. After making at least 60 meat pastries, I brushed each pastry with milk so it can achieve a rustic golden look when it finished. 

I left the chicken and corn puffs aside as I wanted to cook the two pastries together and started working on the corn and ham quiches. I beat the eggs and added the corn, bacon, onion and grated cheddar cheese. Similar to the other recipe, the onion and bacon had been lightly fried and cooled.

After mixing for quite some time, the corn mixture looked a bit unappealing. It actually looked like yellow vomit but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t going to taste how it looked!  

I then set aside the quiche mixture and started preparing the pastry. I greased the muffin tray with some melted butter and measured and cut each piece of pastry to fit the muffin tray. I then filled each muffin tray with the quiche mixture by measuring two tablespoons of mixture to each muffin cup. Some of the muffin cups were overfilled with the mixture which made the puff pastry a bit soggy.

Both the quiches and the puffs were now ready to be baked. This is the corn mixture pastries being oven-baked in my family’s oven. The pre-heated temperature was 160 degrees Celsius and when I opened to put the pastries in the oven, the hot air pushed into my face. It felt so nice especially because it was a very cold day. This photo was one of the best photos taking my cousin for this recipe.

The first batch of egg corn pastries looked BRILLIANT! The pastries had puffed up and looked like bowls and the egg corn filling is the meal. The egg mixture was golden brown and you could really smell the cheese and bacon. There were four batches after the first batch so there were lots of these pastries to go around the family. From the appearance of the pastries, it looked puffy, crunchy and I wanted to dig my teeth into one.

This is the chicken and corn puffs baking in the oven. Some of the pastries had too much filling so some of them had holes with filling slowly moving out.  For some pastries, I only brushed one side with milk and some had both sides brushed. I was pleased to see that there wasn’t that much moisture and juice coming out of the pastry which meant the breadcrumbs was doing its job. The chicken and corn puffs were baked for 15 minutes and then flipped to the other side and baked for an additional 5 minutes to golden the pastry.

The first batch of meat corn pastries looked AMAZING! The big and small pastries looked like footballs. After they came out of the oven, the whole kitchen smelt like a French bakery and the smell of pastries was delicious. There were five batches after the first batch so it was like a feast rather than an entrée.

The finish product looked like it was from a 5-star restaurant and all the pastries that I used for this photo were all golden on all sides. In total, I baked over 50 or so pastries for the whole family which I was extremely surprised to cook that much. The first bite of the egg corn pastries was like a party in my mouth; all the textures and taste being mashed in one bite. The pastry was very crunchy and puffy, the corn was still juicy and sweet and I could barely taste the cheese. In future, if I could cook this recipe again, I would put more cheese than recommend on the recipe.

The corn meat pastry was the winner; the pastry was so crisp and golden and the flavours of the mince and the vegetables were delicious. By looking at the pastries you couldn’t tell which one was re-used but you could taste it as the pastry was hard and wasn’t that crunchy. I’m still glad I re-used it rather than throwing out the remaining puff pastry.

The filling had some problems such as I couldn’t taste the corn but the parsley was a little overpowering so next time, less parsley and more corn. My family devoured the pastries in half an hour but luckily I saved some for school the next day. The puff pastry was delicious and it made me think how delicious home-made puff pastry would be. I know that it’s difficult to make but maybe one day I should try it! These two dishes was a really winner with my family and I would recommended it for any party!

The corn and bacon quiches recipe was taken from TASTE.COM

The chicken and corn puffs was from the TRAN FAMILY


Q: If you had corn has your main ingredient, what would you make?