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Want a refreshing appetizer that will whet the appetite of your guests and hint at the freshness of summer, but not fill them up or weigh them down? Try these deliciously fresh summer rolls.
When Chris and I were in Vietnam a couple years ago, we were pretty much in a food-lover’s paradise. Light crusty baguettes baked fresh every morning, with an egg omelet, a thin layer of pork pâté, some cilantro and hot sauce sandwiched within – UMM! The only thing that made breakfast any better was the deliciously strong Vietnamese coffee sweetened with condensed milk.
It was in Vietnam that we got the opportunity to eat snake, prepared 10 different ways, with a vast assortment of delicious side dishes. We also ate our share of piping hot bowls of pho, or beef soup noodles, plates of fried noodles, as well as huge thin crepes stuffed with a variety of fillings. One of the things we noticed about Vietnamese dining was that many dishes were accompanied by a big platter of fresh leafy vegetables – lettuces, basil, mint, and other vegetables I can’t put a name to. And these summer rolls were one of the freshest tasting little dishes we tasted while we were in the country.
Luckily they’re easy to reproduce, once you get the hang of rolling. Made with rice paper, tofu, and some quick-pickled vegetables, these Vietnamese-style summer rolls are served with a delicious peanut dipping sauce
Vegetarian Summer Rolls
Makes 10 rolls
10 sheets of 8-inch rice paper wrappers
1 head romaine lettuce, washed and torn into pieces
1 cup julienned carrots
1 cup julienned daikon radish
¼ cup white rice vinegar
1 tsp sugar
4 pieces pressed firm tofu (they’re sold in flat pieces rather than blocks)
Extra greens (thai basil, mint, etc… as you like)
Peanut Sauce
2 heaping tablespoons peanut butter
1 tablespoon white rice vinegar
1 tsp toasted sesame oil
Chopped fresh red chilies (optional)
Put the carrots and daikon in a bowl with the rice vinegar, sugar, and a pinch of salt. Let them sit for 20 minutes, then drain.
Cut the pressed tofu into thin strips. Lay one rice paper wrapper on a flat surface, and moisten with a wet paper towel until it becomes soft, but not soggy. Lay some lettuce (and other greens, if using) on the wrapper, then add some tofu, carrots and daikon. Fold one side of the wrapper over the vegetables, then fold the sides over and finish rolling the summer roll. Repeat until all the rolls are finished.
In a small bowl, mix together the ingredients for the peanut sauce (the best way is to stir it briskly with a pair of chopsticks) until they come together.
Serve summer rolls with dipping sauce on the side.
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One of our favorite cuisines, but one that we don’t often cook at home, is Malaysian food. After actually being in Malaysia and eating TONS of freshly fried mee goreng (fried noodles in a delicious sauce), curry, nasi goreng (fried rice), laksa (noodles in a spicy coconut-seafood soup), most of these served from little carts on the street, it’s just hard to recreate those flavors at home in a satisfying way.
One of my favorite restaurants in Toronto is Restoran Malaysia in Richmond Hill, at the corner of Major Mackenzie and Bayview. A few good Singaporean friends of mine swear that their Hainanese Steamed Chicken is just like how Mama made it, and their pineapple fried rice is also really good.
Fortunately, pineapple fried rice is an easy dish and even without the street cart, possible to recreate at home. Serve it in a hollowed-out half pineapple, and you’ve got a stunning presentation that would look at home in a restaurant. And like all fried rice dishes, you can vary the ingredients depending on what you have on hand.
I took a suggestion from Rasa Malaysia, and instead of using a heavy hand with soy sauce, I flavored the rice mostly with a bit of Thai fish sauce. Thai fish sauce is a salty, savory sauce that doesn’t taste fishy at all – it just adds savoriness, or umami – think anchovies in Italian cooking. And don’t mistake it for the Vietnamese version, which is delicious too, but nowhere near as salty.
Fried rice is best with leftover rice that has been refrigerated at least overnight – the rice has a firmer texture and less moisture, so it won’t make the final dish soggy.
Pineapple Fried Rice
½ large pineapple, hollowed out and flesh cubed
½ pound fresh or frozen shrimp, shelled
200g pork, thinly sliced
¼ cup diced carrot
½ onion, diced
1 red chili pepper, thinly sliced
2 cups cooked leftover rice
1 tbsp fish sauce
1 tsp dark soy sauce
1 egg
In a wok, heat a little oil and fry the pork and shrimp until cooked through (shrimp should be opaque). Remove to a dish and set aside.
Stir-fry the carrot and onion in the wok until carrot is softened and onion is translucent. Add a little more cooking oil. Add the pineapple, rice, red chili pepper, cooked pork and shrimp. Toss together until thoroughly mixed and rice is heated through. Make a space in the center of the wok and crack in the egg. Use your spatula to scramble the egg right there in the center of the fried rice until gently cooked. Mix into the rest of the rice.
Add the fish sauce, dark soy sauce, and toss thoroughly. Taste for seasonings, and add salt if desired. Serve in the hollowed out pineapple half. Garnish with chopped roasted cashews and more red chili pepper if you like.
Risotto sounds intimidating, and it does require a lot of stirring, but really, it’s a very simple dish to make. The best thing about it is that you can basically stir in just about anything and thus reinvent the dish for yourself. It’s the perfect palette for a variety of flavorful foods, from mushrooms to leeks, to spring peas, to sun-dried tomatoes, to seafood, to lemon – you name it!
This risotto is a simple one, with the only added ingredient being tangy sun-dried tomatoes. I complemented the sun-dried tomatoes with some simply roasted cherry (or grape, to be precise) tomatoes over the top. The roasting brings out the sweetness of the tomatoes, and their freshness was a nice counterpoint to the creamy risotto.
You CAN leave the risotto on its own for a minute or two – especially if you’re using a non-stick pan, but you need to make sure it doesn’t stick to the pan and burn. I found that the 40 minutes of stirring wasn’t too tedious if I busied myself doing other tasks around the kitchen at the same time (washing dishes, organizing spices, etc…).
Oh, and you MUST serve this immediately, otherwise the luscious creaminess turns sticky and thick and not very nice.
Sun-Dried Tomato Risotto with Roasted Cherry Tomatoes
Serves 4
Roasted Cherry Tomatoes
2 cups cherry tomatoes, halved
salt and pepper
olive oil
Risotto
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp olive oil
2 shallots, diced fine
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 ½ cups Arborio rice
1 cup dry white wine
4 cups (or more) warm chicken broth
¼ cup sun-dried tomatoes (packed in oil or softened in hot water), chopped
2 tbsp toasted pine nuts (optional)
Preheat oven to 400 F.
Toss the halved cherry tomatoes with 2 tbsp of olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Spread on a baking sheet and roast in oven about 10 minutes, until soft and slightly browned.
Melt the butter with the olive oil over medium heat. Add the shallots and garlic, and cook until they start to soften. Add the rice and cook, stirring, until edges of rice begin to grow translucent, about 2 minutes.
Add the white wine, and stir until absorbed by the rice. Stir in the sun-dried tomatoes. Gradually add the broth one cup at a time, allowing each cup of broth to be absorbed by the rice before adding more. Rice is done when creamy and tender, but still a bit al dente.
Serve the risotto topped with roasted tomatoes and sprinkle with toasted pine nuts, if desired.
Growing up, my mom often made stir-fried Napa cabbage as part of our meals. In my mind, Napa cabbage always came cooked, as part of a Chinese family-style meal, with rice and the works. And it IS really good cooked, simply stir-fried with some minced garlic. It has a slight sweetness to it, and doesn’t make you as gassy as normal cabbage (oops, did I just say “gassy” on a food blog? That’s gotta be a big no-no).
It took a trip to California to visit the in-laws for me to learn about this simple, no-brainer, and absolutely delicious way to prepare Napa cabbage. IN A SALAD!!! Hello, light sweet flavor? Crisp, refreshing texture? Wrinkly leaves perfect for catching and holding the flavor of a light sesame dressing? Napa cabbage salad, where have you been all my life? Thank you, thank you, mother-in-law!
It’s so easy to make. Just slice up a whole cabbage with a big knife (discarding the bottom 2 inches or so which are mainly stem), then rinse the leaves and spin them dry. Chop up a cucumber and a yellow pepper – oh how I love the crunch of this salad – and add some soy candied walnuts for extra crunch and sweetness (you can get these pre-made at your local Asian supermarket). A slightly sweet honey-sesame dressing rounds out the flavors and makes this salad distinctly Asian.
Asian Napa Cabbage Salad
1 medium head Napa Cabbage
½ English cucumber, sliced thinly
1 yellow bell pepper, chopped
¼ cup candied walnuts, coarsely chopped
2 tbsp rice vinegar
1 tsp honey
2 tbsp toasted sesame oil
2 tbsp olive oil
Slice the whole head of cabbage crosswise into ½ to ¾ inch sections, discarding the bottom two inches of the cabbage. Rinse the cabbage and spin the leaves dry in a salad spinner. Toss cucumber, pepper, and walnuts with cabbage.
Whisk together vinegar, honey, sesame oil and olive oil. Toss with salad. Adjust seasonings to taste, adding more vinegar if needed.
Asian Napa Cabbage Salad
Growing up, my mom often made stir-fried Napa cabbage as part of our meals. In my mind, Napa cabbage always came cooked, as part of a Chinese family-style meal, with rice and the works. And it IS really good cooked, simply stir-fried with some minced garlic. It has a slight sweetness to it, and doesn’t make you as gassy as normal cabbage (oops, did I just say “gassy” on a food blog? That’s gotta be a big no-no).
It took a trip to California to visit the in-laws for me to learn about this simple, no-brainer, and absolutely delicious way to prepare Napa cabbage. IN A SALAD!!! Hello, light sweet flavor? Crisp, refreshing texture? Wrinkly leaves perfect for catching and holding the flavor of a light sesame dressing? Napa cabbage salad, where have you been all my life? Thank you, thank you, mother-in-law!
It’s so easy to make. Just slice up a whole cabbage with a big knife (discarding the bottom 2 inches or so which are mainly stem), then rinse the leaves and spin them dry. Chop up a cucumber and a yellow pepper – oh how I love the crunch of this salad – and add some soy candied walnuts for extra sweetness (you can get these pre-made at your local Asian supermarket). A slightly sweet honey-sesame dressing rounds out the flavors and makes this salad distinctly Asian.
Asian Napa Cabbage Salad
1 medium head Napa Cabbage
½ English cucumber, sliced thinly
1 yellow bell pepper, chopped
¼ cup candied walnuts, coarsely chopped
2 tbsp rice vinegar
1 tsp honey
2 tbsp toasted sesame oil
2 tbsp olive oil
Slice the whole head of cabbage crosswise into ½ to ¾ inch sections, discarding the bottom two inches of the cabbage. Rinse the cabbage and spin the leaves dry in a salad spinner. Toss cucumber, pepper, and walnuts with cabbage.
Whisk together vinegar, honey, sesame oil and olive oil. Toss with salad. Adjust seasonings to taste, adding more vinegar if needed.
Summer comes early in our little town in Southern China, and right now in early March it’s already strawberry season. One of the joys of living seasonally is anticipating the various fruit seasons, enjoying the fruit to the utmost while it’s in season (and perhaps canning some for the months to come), and then looking forward to the next seasonal fruit. Strawberries will only be around for about a month, and the brevity of this season makes them all the more delicious. No woody, grassy-tasting strawberries for me in November – no thanks – I’d rather have the best tasting, melt-in-your mouth berries for a few weeks than have less than the best all year.
This is the first time I’ve made strawberry shortcake, and I gotta tell ya – this recipe’s a keeper! Cobbled together from an Epicurious recipe and a few others from around the web, this dessert couples meltingly sweet, ripe strawberries with a lemony buttermilk biscuit and fluffy whipped cream. It’s got the perfect blend of crispness from the biscuit and lusciousness from the macerated strawberries. And I love, love, LOVE the contrast of the lemon zest and the strawberries.
PLEASE don’t use strawberries that are anything less than ripe. This recipe is basically a strawberry delivery system, and if the star ingredient isn’t up to par, it falls flat.
Lemony Strawberry Shortcakes
loosely adapted from Epicurious
Serves 6
Sweet Lemon Buttermilk Biscuits
2 cups flour
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tsp baking powder
1 scant tsp baking soda
2 tbsp sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
½ tsp salt
½ tbsp grated lemon zest
2/3 cup buttermilk, well shaken, plus extra
Strawberries
2 pounds ripe strawberries, washed and hulled
1/3 cup sugar
2 tbsp lemon juice
Whipped Cream
1 cup chilled whipping cream
3 tbsp sugar
Preheat oven to 375 F.
Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar and salt together in a bowl. Using your fingertips, rub in the butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add the lemon zest and buttermilk. Fold gently into dry ingredients until incorporated.
Transfer dough onto a lightly floured surface and pat (with floured hands) into a circle about 1.5 inches thick. Cut dough into 6 wedges and transfer to baking sheet.
Brush wedges with extra buttermilk and sprinkle with extra sugar. Bake for about 15-18 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into middle of biscuits comes out clean.
Meanwhile, cut the strawberries into quarters (or halves if they’re small), and mix with the sugar and lemon juice. Let macerate for about 15 minutes.
Beat the whipping cream with the sugar until it forms soft peaks.
When biscuits are done, let them cool about 5 minutes, then cut them in half. Pile with strawberries and whipped cream, and serve immediately.
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About Us
We are a Canamerican (Canadian-American) couple living in China. Join us on our culinary adventures both in the kitchen and in the fascinating country where we live.
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