Madhouse recipe : Pork & Veg Spring Rolls

You may remember that one of my New Year's resolutions was to clear out my food cupboards. One of the main things taking up a lot of space are all the leftover ends of packets from my Kitchen Nomad boxes so I'm looking at different ways of using up some of these exotic ingredients. You may remember we made Saigon Summer Rolls a while ago. This time I decided to use up some cooked pork from the Sunday roast and make spring rolls.

Pork & Veg Spring Rolls

ingredients :

1 large carrot, grated

a small wedge of white cabbage, grated

salt & pepper

a drizzle of white wine vinegar

rice vermicelli

leftover cooked pork

1/2 clove garlic, crushed

a small piece of fresh ginger, finely chopped

1 shallot, finely sliced

Thai seasoning

rice paper spring roll wrappers

oil for frying

First, prepare all of the separate ingredients. Grate the carrot and white cabbage into a bowl, season with salt & pepper, drizzle over some white wine vinegar and put to one side. In another bowl, put the rice vermicelli in some boiling water for 1 minute, drain and reserve.

Finely chop the pork and shallots. Heat a little olive oil in a wok or frying pan and quickly stir fry the pork with the shallots, garlic and ginger until the shallots are soft. Sprinkle with Thai seasoning. Remove from heat and reserve.

Line up all your ingredients where you can get to them easily. Prepare a shallow dish of hot water for the rice paper discs. (It doesn't need to be that hot.) Dunk one rice paper disc in the water until it goes soft, sticky and pliable then shake off the excess water and lay it out on a plate.

Put a small amount of each filling - carrots/cabbage, rice vermicelli and pork -in a line in the centre of the disc then fold over both sides and roll it up fairly tightly.

These can be eaten as they are in which case they are called Summer Rolls.

I decided to try out Spring Rolls by frying them for a few minutes in hot ground nut oil.

I decided to lay them on kitchen roll to soak up some of the excess oil, but this was a bad move because it stuck to the rice paper case and pulled bits off.

I cut up one of each to share out - a Summer Roll and a Spring Roll - and we couldn't decide which ones we liked best. I opted for the Spring Rolls in the end to cut down on calories and fat content. Juliette likes veggie versions with just carrot and cabbage. They're a great way of jazzing up the leftovers and can be eaten as starters, nibbles or a main meal. Adding a little dish of dipping sauce - we had Hoisin, Chilli & Ginger or (my favourite) Mango Chilli - takes them to another level.

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Recipe: Festive Spiced Cranberry Muffins

Pidy Vol au Vent Cases review

Making Flowerpot Bread from The Kids Only Cookbook