Homemade Spring Rolls

Ok I miss Asian food here- a lot. I've really REALLY been wanting to make spring rolls or dumplings or pot stickers or anything like that but you can't buy the skins/wrappers in the stores here like you can in the US. My Filipina co-worker has been craving spring rolls too so we decided to set out on the adventure of making spring rolls from scratch- and by scratch I mean making the wrappers, making the inside stuff, assembling them, frying and eating. And this week we had a public holiday- the perfect day for cooking experiments! Ami found the recipe for the spring roll wrapper. My problem with this entire endever was that I would never have the patience to roll out dough that thin. Its just not going to happen. But Ami found a recipe where you make a really oozy, goopy dough that you wipe on a hot pan creating a thin film that cooks into the spring roll wrapper and you just peel it off the pan. Sounds great in theory!

So Attempt (Day) 1: made the dough the night before (as per recipe instructions- I hate when you have to make something ahead of time and let it sit- it leaves no room for error and quick correction while you are trying to cook). Flour, water, little bit of corn starch- this is easy! I watched the nifty how-to video online again and started to try to make the wrappers. NOT as easy as it looks on the video! The dough is like ooze and you have to keep it contained in one hand and try to get the cooking wrapper peeled off the hot pan with your non-dominant hand. This might be easier if I were ambidextrous! And you really do need a non-stick pan! The first pan I tried was non-stick but the wrapper wouldn't come off. Tried a few other pans (and a cookie sheet) but it wasn't working.

Attempt 2: The next day, I tried a different pan (recommended by a friend) and that actually worked!! It still took some coordination to get the dough in the pan, the excess dough out of the pan and then peel the finished wrapper out but it was working!! I had things remotely resembling spring roll wrapper!! Cool! But I had used up so much dough trying to figure this entire process out, I only ended up with about 5 usable wrappers. So I decided to try this again with new dough the next day.Attempt 3: Ok new dough, a pan that works- this should be easy!!! After I figured out that the dough was too thick, it went pretty well. I still tore quite a few of the wrappers but it was working out! After cooking all the wrappers, I filled, rolled, fried and then we ate them!! SOOOO good. WAY better then Chinese take out! Slightly more labor intensive but really really yummy!! I think next time I need to make a ton of them and then freeze them. It should be easier now that I have all the kinks worked out!

So that was my adventure for this public holiday. Good thing we had a long weekend- 1 day off was not enough to figure this one out!!