Spring Rolls

Missy Wombat's Note:

From "Wolf and Lamb Animal Free Cooking". Highly recommended by my friend Jac who lent me this brilliant vegan cookbook. Spring rolls will taste good with anything as long as it is cut fine and you have a nice dipping sauce.

• Total Time: 1 hrs 10 mins
• Prep Time: 1 hrs
• Cook Time: 10 mins

Ingredients:

Serves: 60-80

Yield: 60.0 rolls

• 80 sheets spring roll wrappers (minimum)
• 100 g rice vermicelli
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2 carrots, finely grated
• 2 tablespoons fresh ginger, finely grated
• 20 g nutritional yeast flakes
• 50 ml soy sauce
• 1/8 medium cabbage, finely shredded
• 1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped (optional)
• 2 tablespoons cornflour or 2 tablespoons rice flour, for sealing pastry

Directions:

1. Break the vermicelli into 10 cm lengths and soak in hot or boiling water for about 30 minutes. Drain and mix with the other ingredients except the pastry and cornflour.
2. Mix the cornflour with about 4T of cold water. then quickly add about 4 times the amount of boiling water while stirring. This will form a gluey mass with which you can paste down the pastry.
3. Open one packet of pastry and carefully separate each sheet by peeling from the corner. Place them evenly over one another to prevent them drying. They become very stiff and crumble on drying so if there is a delay in using the pastry, cover the sheets with the wrapper in which they were sold.
4. Place a pastry sheet on the table in front of you so that one diagonal points at you.
5. Place a spoonful of mixture in the corner closest to you. Roll the sheet from the corner with the mixture on it about a third of the way up. Take the two side corners and fold them over to make an envelope before you continue rolling all the way up to the top.
6. Before you wrap the last corner, paste a little of the cornflour glue on the pastry. This prevents the pastry from unfolding if you deepfry the rolls. If you plan to shallow fry the rolls you don't need to use a cornflour mixture and can get away with a little water instead.
7. Deep fry or shallow fry the rolls in vegetable oil. If the rolls are only about 2-3 cm thick they do not need defrosting after being deep frozen. Fry until the pastry is crispy brown.
8. These freeze well, but make sure you put them in the freezer as soon as you can after you have made them in order that they don't go soggy and break apart.
9. Serve alone or with tomato or chilli sauce or wine sauce.