Recipe: Superior Spring Rolls

the appetizer:

Try vegetarian cooking with V Cuisine: The Art of New Vegan Cooking by Angeline Linardis, including recipes for Superior Spring Rolls; Colorful Black Thai Rice; and Panko-Stuffed Portobello Caps.

Cookbook

Spring Rolls

Serves 4-6

These make a zingy appetizer to ignite any party or a wonderful and unique supper. As a meal, they're lovely served along with a light stir fry of snow peas, baby carrots and water chestnuts. That sounded good, but I never do that (ha ha). I just make the spring rolls as a meal. There are lots of veggies in them and it makes any old night feel festive.

1-2 Tbsp (15-30 mL) olive oil
3 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 medium onion, finely diced
11-oz (312-g) package of vegetarian ground "beef"
Soy sauce to taste
1 Tbsp (15 mL) powdered ginger
1/2 large cabbage, finely shredded
1cup (250 mL) "traditional" or firm tofu
Salt to taste
Optional: hot sauce or white pepper to taste
Spring roll wraps
(The ones I use have 24 to a package and are about 8 inches (20 cm) across.)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C).

In a large pot, put enough oil to cook down the garlic and onions until the onions are translucent, at about medium-low heat. When they're done, crumble in the package of veg ground "beef." Add a little water or soy as required so that the mixture doesn't stick. At this time, you can add the ginger and about half of the cabbage, Cook it a couple of minutes more and season it. Lightly mash the tofu and then add it to the mixture. When it's piping hot, remove it from the heat and add the remainder of the cabbage,Toss it in; the filling is ready to use.

Peel apart several of the spring roll wraps. Take a small scoop of the filling and place it in the center of a wrap. You'll have more surface area if you work on the diagonal, but wrap it up however you like, Make a line of the filling, tuck in the sides, and roll it up. Add a drop or two of water to the final corner to help secure it shut. You should have a nice, snug little wrap, Remember, they're delicious overstuffed, but they may fall apart, so try to keep a reasonable balance between the filling

Bake for about 5-7 minutes per side or until golden brown and crispy. You may want to turn them once, to crisp up both sides. I realize something like this doesn't have "sides" but to brown them up front and back is plenty.

Cut them in half and serve them with plum sauce, soy or any other Asian-style sauce you love.They're fantastic with garlic-chili sauce if you like hot and spicy!

Strangely enough, plum sauce with some soy sauce drizzled over the top is pretty great. The killer sweetness of the plum is broken up by the intensely fermented saltiness of the soy.

You can fill these with anything. Have some leftovers from that stir-fry the night before? Throw that in, for sure. I like to just crush up some navy beans and add a crazy amount of chopped green onion-it's excellent!

For the sweeter set: fill the spring roll wrappers with fresh peaches or a peach pie filling and lightly bake. Dust with a barely-there flurry of powdered sugar.