Stuart's Soliloquy to the void

Fresh Vietnamese spring rolls

Friday, April 25th, 2008 | Cooking | No Comments

Normally spring rolls is something with extreme amounts of fat and the hassle of deep frying them, so it was quite a refreshing change when I stumbled across fresh Vietnamese spring rolls on Haalo’s blog Cook (almost) anything at least once. Since these spring rolls require rice paper I had to find a small specialty store in central Copenhagen where I was able to buy it, fairly cheap taking into account how many spring rolls we have been able to make with it.

Each sheet is very thin but rather rigid and to be able to roll it, you dip it for a few seconds in tepid to warm water and then place it on a damp towel, add the ingredients and roll it up nicely.

Keeping with Haalo’s recipe, we added steamed chicken, spring onions, lettuce, coriander and vermicelli noodles, although I think the original fresh Vietnamese spring rolls are made with minced pork, but nevermind this. The spring rolls were slightly rubbery, which the lettuce offset nicely, and they were excellent as a fresh, different appetiser. We will definitely be using this again.

Tags: appetisers, Cooking, vietnam

Home-made pappardelle and torta con le mele

Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 | Cooking | 1 Comment

Pasta is one of the two things that Italy has really succeeded in exporting far and wide (pizza being the other), and we see them everywhere, the penne, the conchiglie, the fettuchine, the farfalle, and the list just keeps on going and going.

One of the bit more expensive pastas here is the fresh pasta, and it only really comes in one form: fettuchine. On the bright side it comes both plain and with spinach. But anything beyond that and you need to go hunting in specialty stores. So, rather than go hunting, I figured that I was in good shape with all the baking to try to make pasta myself, which went rather well up until this point:

Now, the book on pasta that I have indicates that you should let the pasta hang to dry for a while until you use it, not place it mashed together on a plate like I did. The reason for this is that once we were ready to use the pasta (after a measly 30 minute wait) the strands were pretty much glued together and impossible to separate, so our pasta was twice as thick as it was supposed to be. Bummer. It was still decent, but not quite like pappardelle is supposed to be.

While the dish is normally served with spaghetti and some cheese, we made Pappardelle alla carbonara, which is a thick sauce with egg, cream (we use an oats-based cream since I am lactose intolerant, and it does nicely in pasta sauces) and fried bacon (I think the regular Carbonara calls for a specialty ham, but those are fairly hard to get here as well). To add some colour, we added peas and a few leaves of basil. Even then photos of the dish looks fairly… icky… so we settled with just eating it.

To stay in the Italian kitchen, my wife prepared a lovely torta con le mele (apple tart/cake), just topped with icing instead of cream. Very wholesome cake that will make you think of cosy winter evenings huddled together in the living room with tea and small-talk.

Tags: baking, Cooking, pasta, tart