Thai Fresh Spring Rolls

These little spring rolls (cups) are healthy and nice looking food. They are good for a party like cocktail party or the mood that you want to make something special for yourself. The party season is coming so I had this idea came up making something nice and healthy. It basically is a bite salad.

This healthy dish can be served all seasons as all the ingredients are available at the market. If you are allergic to seafood you can simply change shrimp to be grilled breast chicken, and if you are vegetarian you can just use grilled firm tofu sticks instead.

In this recipe, I use Thai brown rice vermicelli but if it is not available in your area then you can just use ordinary one.

Ingredients

30               Shrimp, peeled and deveined (size 31 – 40)

1 tbsp         Soy sauce

2 tbsp         Water

1 tbsp         Vegetable oil

150 g.          Thai brown rice vermicelli or rice vermicelli

5 pieces       Rice paper (for size 22 x 22 cm) or 7 pieces (size 15 x 15 cm.)

1                  Green or red lettuce

1                  Small carrot, cut into long thin sticks or julienne, 1 ½ - 1 ¾ inch long

1                  Small cucumber, cut into less than ½ x 1 ½ - 1 ¾ inch long (60 sticks)

60 leaves      Mint

1 tsp             Salt

Peanut Dipping Sauce (recipe follows)

Instructions

1. Bring a medium pot of water to a boil over medium high heat. Add salt and noodles, and cook until noodles are tender. Drain and transfer to a bowl. Put aside.
2. Combine shrimp, soy sauce and oil.
3. Place a frying pan on medium high heat. Add shrimp and water, and cover the frying pan with a lid while the shrimp is cooking, cook shrimp 1 minute each side until it is cooked or turn pink.  Remove from heat and transfer to a plate.
4. Dip rice papers in room temperature water and cut into 1 ¼ inch strips with scissors. And lay rice paper strips flat on wooded cutting board.
5. Cut green lettuce leaf 1 ½ inch from the ruffly edge of lettuce leaf by 3 inches long. Place a small bundle of noodles on top of mint leaves, and top with 2 cucumber sticks, 7 - 8 carrot sticks and shrimp. Roll lettuce around it tightly and secure the roll by wrapping around with a rice paper strip. Repeat with remaining ingredients.  Serve with peanut dipping sauce.

Peanut dipping sauce 

1 cake            Palm sugar (see the picture on "Herbs" page)

2 tbsp            Water

½ cup            Roasted unsalted peanuts, crushed

½ - 1              Fresh Thai chili or Prik Kee Noo, finely chopped

1 ½ tbsp        Fresh coriander, finely chopped

1 ¾ tbsp        Fish sauce (or soy sauce, if seafood is an issue)

1 ¾ tbsp        Lime juice

 Instructions

1. Place palm sugar and water in a small pot over medium heat. And cook until palm sugar dissolved, and remove from heat. Add fish sauce and lime juice, and mix well.
2. Add crushed peanut, chopped chili and chopped coriander, and mix well.

Pad Cha Squid

Pad Cha (literally, stir-frying with cha cha sound or sizzling sound of burning food from the hot wok.) is a very popular stir-fried spicy dish and commonly is seafood. Pad Cha dish has many different versions from different kinds of seafood for example squid, fish, shrimp, crab and or clam. Each kind of seafood may have slightly different flavors from different herbs beside the kind of seafood itself.

This dish has a very nice and strong fragrance from herbs which is good as the herbs be able to cover the smell of seafood and at the same time the aroma and nice flavor delight the palate.

This dish is not complicated to make, and it doesn't consume a lot of time to make either, to create a nice real Thai meal at home.

*All the ingredients are available at Asian grocery stores.

For 2 servings

Ingredients

1                         Fresh squid (about 400 – 420g.)

3                         Fresh Thai chillies or Prik Kee Noo (adjustable)

3 cloves             Garlic

½ cup                 Bai Ga Prao or Holy basil

¼ cup                Fingerroot (about 3 - 4 roots), shredded or cut into stripes

2 tbsps               Young or green peppercorn

2 - 3 tbsps          Vegetable oil

1 tbsp                 Fish sauce (adjustable)

1 tbsp                 Oyster sauce

2 - 3 tbsps          Water

Garnish (optional)

¼ cup  Bai Ga Prao or Holy basil – for deep frying in oil until crisp.

You can also follow the instructions from the video.

Instructions

1. Cut the squid tube in half lengthwise. Clean and remove the quills. Cut into rectangle or square pieces and cut each piece a criss-cross pattern on the inside of the squid.
2. Pound fresh Thai chilli and garlic in mortar until break to be small pieces or you can use a knife to chop chillies and garlic.
3. Place the wok on medium heat with vegetable oil and swirl the oil to cover the bottom of the wok.
4. Add the mixture of chilli and garlic, stir-frying until its sends the fragrance and then add squid and stir to mix well.
5. Add fish sauce, oyster sauce, young pepper corn, fingerroot and stir to mix well and add the water on the wok beside the food and so that water will be hot before the water mix into food.
6.  At last, add Bai Ga Prao or Holy basil and mix into the mixture and stir until Holy basil wilt and remove from heat.
7. Garnish with crispy Bai Ga Prao. Serve hot with hot steamed Jasmine rice.