Eats the World: Thai cooking - fried spring rolls recipe and some pics

I have a bit of a weakness for fried food and love a good spring roll.

I'd never even thought about making them myself before, so was very pleased when they were on the menu for our Thai cookery course at Ao Nang Cookery School.

Although they seemed easy peasy to make when we were there, I did have a couple of problems when I made them at home. Mainly due to the fact that the wrappers I'd bought here were very different to the ones we used in the class. The ones I bought (below) needed to be soaked in water for a couple of minutes before use and then were extremely delicate. They were also round, whereas the ones we used in Ao Nang were square! They worked out really well in the end though and were delicious, served with a (shop bought) sweet chilli dip.

You could adapt these to use whatever filling you fancy. My recipe is vegetarian but you could add chicken or prawns. Adding cabbage and/or celery would also work well.

Oh, and a couple of Thailand pics below too.

Ingredients:
50g mushroom (I used oyster mushroom) thinly sliced
1 small carrot, thinly sliced in matchsticks
2 spring onions, chopped
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 teaspoon grated ginger (optional)
100g glass noodle, pre-soaked in cold water for 10 minutes*
1 tablespoon oil for cooking

For the sauce:
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1/2 tablespoon fish sauce
1 teaspoon sugar

Spring roll wrappers (soaked for two mins in cold water)

1 egg yolk, to seal wrappers

Vegetable oil for frying

Method:
Stir fry filling ingredients for 2 minutes. Add the sauce ingredients and cook for further 2 minutes.

Take one spring roll wrapper at a time. Place a heaped tablespoon of filling in bottom third of wrapper (see pics). Fold over the bottom, then the sides. Keep rolling until you get to the top. Brush the top with a little egg yolk to seal.

In a pan, heat vegetable oil to about 2-3 cm. Deep fry the spring rolls for about 5 minutes, until golden brown and crispy. Chop in half and serve with sweet chilli dip.

*Confusingly, glass noodles are also known as cellophane noodles, Chinese vermicelli, bean thread noodles or sai fun. They are very fine noodles, which go translucent when soaked - hence first two names.