Recipe 6: rice rolls

Welcome to another blog post! One of my favorite ingredients is tofu and today I will share how I prepare my tofu and the recipe for one of my favorite dishes to have tofu in: rice rolls. These are kind of like spring rolls, only then made with rice paper and not necessarily fried, though that is optional. They are quite light, so good for lunch, but also as starter or main in a 3 course meal. I already stuffed and rolled mine in the kitchen, but it’s also fun to prepare them with guests at the table. If you have veggie left-overs but don’t want to make more rice rolls, you can use the vegetables in a miso soup. I hope you enjoy it and let me know if you make it!

Ingredients for about 2 serving

• 175 g tofu + 1 tbs of sweet soy sauce (Ketjap)
• 1 winter carrot (or multiple normal carrots)
• 100 g bok choy (or 2 mini’s)
• 150 g bean sprouts
• Rice sheets, I think about 8 should do
• Optional: (left-over) rice to make the dish more full-filling, peanuts
• Extra seasoning: chili pepper, spring onions, coriander, fresh mint

Ingredients for the dipping sauce

• 1 tbs lime juice
• 1/2 tbs of hot sauce (or less if you aren’t into spicy food)
• 2 tbs mushroom sauce
• 2 tbs ketjap (sweet soy sauce)
• 2 tbs water

Method preparation of tofu

1. The first step is to remove the packaging of the tofu and to gently press it so that as much of the liquid with get out of it. Next, dice the tofu. I usually do squares, but prefer strips in rice rolls.
2. Next, marinate the tofu in ketjap (sweet soy sauce), I left mine for about an hour, but you could also do this the night/morning beforehand to give it extra flavor.
3. Depending on whether you want to have this dish hot or cold, you could prepare some (brown) rice. I had some left-over rice from the night before and I wanted this dish to be cold, so I didn’t heat it. If you prefer to have your rice hot (and stuff and roll the rice rolls at the table), make sure that it’s done at the same time as everything else, so about 15 minutes after the hour of marinating the tofu has passed.

Method vegetables

1. Cut the winter carrot in strips, by first slicing the carrot in the width in 3 parts. Then, slice them in half lengthwise. Slice those halves lengthwise and half those parts too lengthwise. If they are too thick for your liking, cut them again in half.
2. Make the dipping sauce by mixing all of the listed ingredients for dipping sauce. Try it and adjust the taste to your liking by adding more of one/some of the ingredients.
3. Fry off the tofu in a frying pan on medium heat. Make sure most/all of 6 sides per pieces get some color, by flipping them occasionally. In the meanwhile you could do step 3-5, just make sure to not burn the tofu.
4. Next up are the small bok choys, wash them and take the leaves off. I kept the leaves whole, but you could cut them smaller if you like. Then, just blanch them in hot water for a few minutes until they are cooked, and set aside.
5. Wash the bean sprouts and also blanch them in hot water for a few minutes until they are done. Set them aside as well.
6. If you are using extra toppings like spring onions or chili pepper, you could chop them now and set aside too.
7. Make yourself a nice working area so you can start preparing and filling the rice sheets. My work station is shown in the picture bellow this method.

Method rice sheets and making the rice rolls

1. With the use of a kettle, boil some water to cook the rice rolls with. Once it has boiled, add this to a large bowl along with some cold water, making the water hot but not too hot to touch it with your hands.
2. Take a rice sheet and soak in the hot water. Make sure all parts get wet and get soft. Once it is soft, gently get it out of the water and make sure it won’t get folded. If it does get folded, try to fold it back to the normal shape. Then put it on a plate. For the following steps, see the pictures under this method as well.
3. Add the toppings in the middle of the sheet.
4. Fold the edges of the top and bottom about 1-2 cm to the inside.
5. Fold the left and right side to middle of the sheet. Make sure one of the sides covers the other and that they stick together.
6. Repeat these steps until you got the amount of rice rolls of your choice. Don’t forget to dip them in the dipping sauce and enjoy!

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I hope you try and like this dish. Like I said in the introduction, it’s also possible to just prepare everything (expect for the rice sheets) and then stuff and roll them at the dinner table. I did that as a main dish at my birthday party last year. I started with miso soup, then had the rice rolls and made some aquafaba chocolate mousse for dessert. Maybe I’ll share the recipe for the dessert too, would you be interested in that? Instead of preparing the vegetables separately, I then made 2 big stir fries. I really like how easy it is to get variations of this dish, just mix up the vegetables. You could also use tempe instead of tofu, or some mock chicken like slices of Vivera’s chicken snitzel. You could even get some vegan prawns, but I haven’t been at Amazing Oriental to get them yet.

One of my vegan friends and I recently made pasta noodles together. She introduced me to mushroom sauce and showed me how easy it is to make a dressing with some basic Asian sauces, she also had some vegan fish sauce. Because of that, I felt inspired to give it a go and try to create a nice sauce at home (with a good ratio between the separate sauces), because to be honest, I would normally just use ketjap or teriyaki sauce. If you use a little less or a bit more of one of the sauces, the result will be completely different, so it’s fun to play with it. However, I do recommend you to keep track of the ratios, so that you can recreate what you like another time.

Can you make more rice rolls and have the left-overs on the next day? Yes you can, but when I tried this, my rice rolls were a bit wet; they probably absorbed some water from the vegetables, so I don’t recommend it. If you have left-overs, you could use them in a (noodle) soup like miso soup. Or just make a stir-fry and have it with some rice or noodles.