Easy Tofu or Shrimp Spring Rolls

Well before enrolling at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY, I spent seven years working as a data analyst in small cubicles for an economic consulting firm with a small group focused on securities and finance litigation.

My days were met with an inflow of datasets to clean and analyze, charts and PowerPoints to make, and conference calls to attend with lawyers. After a few years, I realized I had contracted a career-altering case of the home cooking bug, which I haven’t really been able to shake since baking with my mother as a young child.

When you are distracted by a full-time data analysis career, the home cooking bug feels a bit like lime disease; it somehow slows the motivation required to dedicate your career to working full-time in spreadsheets.

You begin to feel tired of the office grind, looking forward to rushing home to check-in on that all-day fortified stock you have had barely-simmering over low heat while you’ve been at work. To my knowledge, there is no known cure for the truly-afflicted.

During this stage of my culinary journey in my mid-twenties, I dove deep into the world of cookbooks and recipes, exploring dishes I previously loved to order at family-owned, non-Western restaurants.

Over the course of the next five years, I acquired roughly four hundred unique cookbooks, many of which I picked up for free, or purchased at discounted used book sales.

People don’t seem to like their old cookbooks—the most ancient, falling-apart books that are out of publication happen to be some of my very favorites!

The knowledge and emotions centered around food and contained in these pages of free or discounted cookbooks gave me more than I could explain. 

During the journey, I came across some amazing chefs and food writers, including relatively undiscovered folks like Cal Peternell. No one seems to talk about folks like Cal, where you read the book, and walk away wanting to cook with him and chat about food. 

But if you are looking for a gift for aspiring cooks or home cooks who want to understand the fundamentals of good home cooking, check this guy Peternell out. He has a simple salad vinaigrette that will change your perspective on food, if you take a step back and listen carefully.

I have a deep-founded respect for folks in the cooking world that are able to fundamentally change the way normal readers think about food and cooking, simply through a piece of food or recipe writing! Side note: If you like great food writing, or are looking for a gift for someone who does, check out M.F.K. Fisher’s “The Art of Eating”.

Another amazing human in the recipe development and cookbook writing space to check out is J. Kenji Lopez-Alt…he is nothing short of a maestro in the world of food science, as applied to home cooking.

Kenji deserves serious recognition for his lifelong pursuit of explaining food and the reasoning behind different cooking techniques. He is the Harold McGee of my generation, and every single one of his cookbooks are worth reading—at the end of the day, he writes his recipes thoughtfully.

The experiences I had reading new recipes and eating at restaurants opened up my mind in terms of what was possible with easy cooking at home. You can create dishes with huge flavors, on a budget, with minimal effort.

These easy homemade spring rolls are no exception. It’s super easy to briefly hydrate the dried paper sheets in cold water for ten or fifteen seconds until they are flexible and easy to roll. The fillings are really up to you.

Here is a base recipe to try:

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Total Time

• Prep Time: 25 minutes

• Cooking Time: 0 minutes

Ingredients

For the Simple Dipping Sauce: 

• 2 Tbsp gluten-free soy sauce

• 1 tsp avocado oil, or neutral oil

• 1 tsp honey

• ½ tsp sesame oil

• Juice from ½ lime, reserve remaining half lime for serving

For the Dish: 

• 6 oz thin rice noodles (“Vermicelli rice noodles”)

• 6 oz extra firm tofu, cut large dice, or cleaned fresh shrimp if desired

• 6 ten-inch dried rice paper sheets for spring rolls

• 1 carrot, cut into fine julienne slices

• ½ cucumber, cut into fine julienne slices

• 6 leaves of green leaf lettuce, or any leafy lettuce, washed and dried

• ½ lime, cut into wedges, for serving

• 12 long chives or garlic chives, for tying around the spring rolls before serving

Instructions

1. For the simple dipping sauce, stir together the gluten-free soy sauce, neutral oil, honey, sesame oil, and lime juice. Taste, and add more soy sauce, honey, or lime juice if desired.

2. When you are satisfied, set the prepared dipping sauce aside for later.

3. For the remaining spring roll components, prepare the filling ingredients before you hydrate the dried rice paper sheets.

4. If you are serving this dish with shrimp, briefly cook the cleaned shrimp in salted boiling water for roughly 45 seconds, or until they are barely cooked-through. Drain the shrimp, and set them aside for spring roll assembly.

5. When you are ready to assemble your spring rolls, arrange all of your required ingredients, and briefly dip the dried rice paper sheet in some room-temperature water until it softens, or for about ten seconds.

6. Quickly place the softened sheet of hydrated rice paper on a cutting board, and fill the center with some of the green leaf lettuce, the finely-sliced carrots and cucumbers, along with the tofu, or cooked shrimp (if using), and a squeeze of fresh lime juice.

7. Roll the softened spring roll sheet up around the filling ingredients tightly, and tie off the center of the roll gently with two long chives or garlic chives. You can also finely-slice the chives and include them in the spring roll filling, if you prefer.

8. Serve the fresh spring rolls with the dipping sauce from earlier, along with some extra slices of fresh lime.

Notes

These are best served right after they are rolled, as the fresh spring rolls tend to dry out if they are assembled too far in advance!

“Julienne” slices refer to a thin, “matchstick-style” cut where the carrots are cut into thin, matchstick-sized pieces. To accomplish this, cut the carrot into thin “planks”, and then slice those planks into thin strips.

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