Spring Rolls

soak the rice wraps individually in warm water

spread on a clean towel & fill with rice noodles & whatever else you like (we did tofu, carrots, cucumber, mint & basil)

get an assembly line of friends to fill & wrap (note home made peanut sauce for dipping)

Voila--spring rolls! Dip, eat, repeat.

I've heard these called spring and summer rolls...but whatever they're called, they're easy & AMAZING! Our friends Annie & Steve showed up with many of the fixins and showed us how to do it. We got a little assembly line going, disproving the "too many cooks spoils the broth" theory and demonstrating that group cooking is lots of fun! We made 2 big batches of these babies. Not the best photos but we were too busy to be artsy.

Asian Collard Rolls

The American south meets the far east here. These turned out way better than I thought they would. These were inspired by the Collard Green Rolls we had once in New York at Red Bamboo but those were fried in a spring roll wrapper. We also just bought some daikon radishes at the farmer's market & didn't know what to do with them, so this helped the dilemma.

Here's what we used:

fresh collard leaves

onion

firm tofu, sliced into thin strips

daikon radish

carrot

sweet potato, chopped really small

sesame seeds

soy sauce

peanut oil

white pepper

Here's what we did:

Washed collards really well. Boiled the collard leaves for a few minutes while frying the sweet potato, onions, & pepper in peanut oil. Also fried the tofu in soy sauce and white pepper. Thinly sliced the radish & carrot, and set aside.

Removed collard leaves from water. Cut out bottom of stem. Scooped potato, onion, and tofu into center, placed carrot & radish stick in center, and rolled up like a mini-burrito. Place seam-side down in pan. Repeated until we ran out of stuff. Sprinkled w/sesame seeds. Baked at 350 for 10 minutes.

While that was baking, we made the peanut sauce:

peanut butter

dash of flax oil

hunk of ginger

lemon juice

lime juice

garlic clove

soy sauce

cayenne pepper

Put it all in a food processor, add water as needed, and blend to taste.