A couple weeks ago we were watching Food Network and for about 10 seconds they showed someone wrapping a shrimp in some sort of wonton or wrap or roll. This got a brain worm in Dallas’ head that he wanted to make it for Thanksgiving… never mind that he never had before and didn’t have any sort of recipe.
Last weekend when we rented car to go to Wisconsin we also ran errands. We ended up going to Costco, Jewel and Whole Foods to get everything we needed… it turned out we were making spring rolls, which I didn’t even realize until we were buying the spring roll skins. About mid week Dallas made a couple rolls and we taste tested.
On Thanksgiving we started making spring rolls. Well, Dallas did most of the work. I just chopped up a few things and prepared the skins. We made a few with different ingredients and sauces and adjusted until we got to something we really liked. In the end we did shrimp marinated in 7 Paths Sesame Ginger Sauce, diced jalapenos, chopped cilantro, chopped leaf lettuce, diced water chestnut and chopped green onion. We tried a bit of Thai chili sauce but it was too hot with the jalapenos. For a dipping sauce we used Iron Chef Sesame Garlic Sauce because it was a bit thicker and it had a sweetness that offset the spiciness of the jalapenos.
What we didn’t think about is how labor intensive the rolls are. Not hard to make, but tedious. I mean, you have to stuff and roll each one and get a technique down. .. which our technique was a little sloppy. .. but at the end? Everyone seemed to love them. It was a fun, unique addition to our meal and was fresh and light in comparison to the other comfort foods that we eat at Thanksgiving.
A couple notes: We got two different kinds of spring roll skins. The ones on the left in the photo below were square and a bit thicker. The ones on the right were round and a bit thinner. Dallas preferred rolling with the thinner round skins.
Not the most attractive presentation, but we layered the rolls between sheets of damp paper towel so that they wouldn’t dry out. Dallas saw online that you were supposed to serve spring rolls within a few hours or they’d get dry. Using plastic wrap and damp paper towel helped keep them moist even until the next day when Dallas and I and Jill and Brian ate the leftovers.
