[Sca-cooks] So, here's an odd question...

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Dec 23, 2006, at 12:49 AM, Sue Clemenger wrote:

> I can't imagine Santa passing up a good beer, though.

Assuming he's not flying under the influence, of course.

>   Or tasty nibbles of
> any sort--what makes a spring roll a "Shanghai" spring roll?

Hmmm. Kind of like how there's a difference between New England and  
Southern cornbread? It's a regional thing; The Shanghainese version  
is made with a cooked pancake-type wrapper made by spreading a big  
ball of somewhat sticky dough on a hot griddle -- what sticks to the  
griddle is the wrapper, and you pull off the rest of the raw dough,  
leaving the residue to cook and pull away from the griddle -- this is  
your wrapper. They make commercial ones that are sort of phyllo-ish,  
but you can still occasionally find real ones in a good market.

[On an unrelated note, using the phyllo-ish commercial wrappers for  
mu xi pork should be punishable by converting the cooks -- if male --  
to the eunuchs the dish was created to honor. But I digress...]

The filling in a Shanghai spring roll is usually a moistish, light  
combination of shredded pork or chicken, shrimp, black mushrooms,  
Tientsin Cabbage (a.k.a. Napa Cabbage, which a lot of Americans think  
is Bok Tsoy but isn't), and maybe either shredded leek or the white  
part of scallions, with just a tiny bit of a light sauce.

Cantonese spring rolls tend to be somewhat heavier, usually filled  
with barbecued pork and/or shrimp, green cabbage, maybe some mung  
bean sprouts and scallions. Unless you make them at home there's  
generally no sauce for the filling. The wrapper is usually a large  
square of egg pasta. These are known in American restaurants as "egg  
rolls", but if you go to China and find an English-speaker anywhere  
in that enormous land, and ask for an egg roll, you'll get something  
entirely different, made by wrapping a meat filling in a paper-thin  
omelette and deep-frying it.

> The ones I've
> been eating and enjoying lately are a cold variety sold by a local
> Vietnamese deli...mmmm....shredded, raw veggies, cilantro, and steamed
> shrimp, wrapped in rice paper....mmmmm

Yes, I like to keep a supply of those wrappers on hand. Those are  
sometimes referred to by English-speakers as "Summer rolls".

Adamantius




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04