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Egg rolls

In Wisconsin the Chinese take-out is not even marginally good…it just sucks. Perhaps we wouldn’t feel this way if we hadn’t lived in the Outer Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco for 6 years. There was always a good Chinese restaurant around the corner and then Andy’s Chinese Cuisine on 9th Avenue delivered and their food was excellent. But alas, Madison and Middleton offer disappointment after disappointment when it comes to Chinese so I’ve decided to just start making it myself.

On New Years Eve I made the ill-fated Soup Dumplings. But I also made egg rolls for the first time and they turned out delicious and were easy to make. The wrappers were store-bought, which is probably why this attempt succeeded so well. They come frozen in a slab with instructions to defrost them prior to use. I stuck them in the microwave, used the defrost mode and set the weight at half a pound. I let it run for about 3/4 of the time the program generated and then pulled them out an left them on the counter for probably a half hour.

In case you haven’t worked a lot with fresh ginger make sure you buy plump, light golden/tan ginger roots (which are really rhizomes). When chopping ginger I’ve found it easiest to slice the knobs into thin slices, then stack and cut those slices into matchsticks, and then stack and cut the matchsticks into tiny dice. Shallots are the bane of my cooking life. Between peeling the little buggers and then chopping them I’m usually blind because of the tears they produce…worse for me than any other member of the Allium family. I’m so slow working with them, then add the tear induced blindness, and it becomes an impossible proposition involving a tremendous amount of moaning and groaning on my part. You’ll see in the recipe that I used Hen of the Woods mushrooms but you could use button or cremini, shitake, etc. The Hen was nice because it has the texture of a button but a more rich and woodsy flavor like a shitake.

Delicious Pork and Veg Egg Rolls

1/3 of a pound of ground pork
3 shallots, chopped fine
2 knobs of fresh ginger (about 2″ x 2″ each), peeled and chopped fine
4 garlic cloves, chopped fine
1/3 head of savoy cabbage, sliced fine
1 head of Maitake (aka Hen of the Woods) mushrooms, chopped rough

Put the ground pork in a heated skillet and sauté on medium until cooked through. Add the ginger, shallots, and garlic and cook until softened. Add the cabbage and sprinkle on some soy sauce or Maggi seasoning, and cover with a lid. After a minute or two uncover and toss the cabbage about, let it cook for another minute or so until the cabbage wilts, then add the mushrooms and continue to cook for another minute or so. Don’t forget to taste for and season with salt throughout this process.

Set this aside to cool or toss in into a steel bowl and toss it with a spoon to cool.

Separate the egg roll wrappers carefully. They will be very thin and this is a tedious process. Stack the wrappers on wax paper and cover with a damp paper towel if you aren’t ready to fill them right away.

Filling the wrappers is easy. Situate the wrapper with a corner point towards the top and bottom and put 2-3 tablespoons of filling in the middle. bring the bottom corner up over the filling, then bring in each side, then roll to the top. Easy and really quite satisfying.

I cooked these in a large skillet with about 1 1/2 inches of canola oil. Watch the heat because it moves very fast and the egg rolls brown up quickly. Place the cook rolls on a rack to cool. This recipe makes about a dozen or so.

Eat them and enjoy. To make this a vegetarian friendly dish you could leave out the pork (I can’t believe I said that!) and increase the veggies.

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