Vegan Fresh Spring Rolls Recipe

Hello my dear friends…
Do you love spring rolls? I used to think that its weird you wrap uncooked ingredients in an uncooked wrapper. My young mind was thinking that it doesnt makes any sense. Food should always be cooked, even the veggies one. As i am getting older, i have tried and discovered more things so my knowledge was also widen. I have tried this fresh spring rolls only twice in my life before i decide that i want to make them. Once i had it in Medan and i can only ordered them online as it was so hard to find someone selling this, the other one was when i went to Bali i had a date with my boyfriend-now-husband in a Vietnamese restaurant. It was special for me so i kept a good memory about it. It was also the one that motivate me to make this because i saw my husband enjoying them very much. Usually, we will be served fresh soing rolls with steamed shrimp. Since this is a vegan version of it, i make some twist in there. Not only that i changed the main protein, i also cooked the protein with a lot of sauce.

Ingredients

Tempeh

Cucumber

Carrot

Rice Paper

Lettuce

• 2 minced red chili
• 2 minced garlic
• 4 minced shallot

• 3pcs of lime leaves
• 1 pcs of lemongrass
• 1 pcs of Bay Leaf

• 2 tbs chili sauce
• 1 tbs sweet soy sauce
• 1 tsp soy sauce
• 1 tbs tomato sauce

How To Cook

• First of all, i want to say that i am sorry because somehow i lost a lot of cooking photos and i just cant recreate them. But, i promise i will share as many detail as possible.
• I cooked the tempe with airfryer for 6 minutes in 160 celcius. I decided to use air fryer because i want to maintain the softness of the tempeh which will be gone if i cooked them with fire and oil. That was the same reason i choose to cook them in only 6 minutes and 160 celcius.
• While the air fryer cooking the tempe, i took the pan and just stir all the seasoning, which consist of red chili, garlic, shallot, lime leaves, lemongrass, bay leaf, chili sauce, tomato sauce, sweet soy sauce, and soy sauce. I just cooked them all with a little bit of cooking oil. In normal situation, i will fry the red chili, garlic, and shallot first before i put the other ingredients but since i want the raw taste of garlic and shallot to be present, i cooked them all together in one go.
• After 6 minutes, i move the tempeh to the sauce and just mixed them all till the tempeh absorbing all of the sauce.

Moving on, for the cucumber and carrot i just have to cut them in a thin strips like this. I leave them raw like this. For the cucumber, take notice that we dont want to used the center side of them as its flimsy.

Now its time for the wrapping.

• I put a warm water in a big plate, as big as my rice paper and dip the rice paper in there first before putting it on my plate.
• For the plate where i wrap the rice paper, i just use a very big plate and covered them in cooking oil before i put the wet rice paper in there.
• When the rice paper already in the plate, i have to make sure that all parts of the rice paper already wet and soft before i stacked the veggies in there.
• I only put the veggies in the first rolls and then i put the tempeh in front of them before i roll and closed them off. The reason why we dont put the tempeh with the veggies was so we can see the tempeh clearly from the outside. Its just makes the presentation more neat like that. It doesnt have anything to do with the taste.

I ended up making 5 fresh spring rolls which i failed the first two of them, i learned from my mistake and succeed the other three. Wrapping them is so fun and what i like about this fresh spring rolls is its okay to make mistake wrapping them, we can still enjoy it fully.