in food we lust

Passport & Plate - spring heart break rolls

Indonesia | Friday, March 14, 2014 | 5 photos

Ingredients
1 onion, diced
6 cloves of garlic, minced
6 cloves of shallots, minced
2 centimetres of ginger, minced
Two table spoon of olive oil
Salt and peper adjusted to your tasting

At least one carrot or 10 baby carrots, diced into small cubes
10 strings of common bean cut into small pieces
A handful of cloud ear mushroom (or if you want to have a good time, use happy mushrooms, but I'm not sure if that's legal), cut into square shape
Canned hot spicy tuna, fresh tuna is even better, but then you have to steam and stir fry it with chillies, in my case I would end up eating the stir fried tuna with chillies with rice instead of finishing this recipe.
100 grams of vermicelli break it into small pieces the way big company crushes their employees, preferably indifferently, then soak in hot water to make it come to life like the Frankenstein monster.
Finely sliced spring onion.
A good grub of cilantro, finely chop the stem and roots, then roughly chop or shred the leaves.
20 ready made springroll sheets. Ain't nobody got time fo' makin' em fresh. But, if you do have time, it's better, but I wouldn't have a clue how. So, refer to the interwebs on how to make springroll sheets.

 

How to prepare this recipe
1. Heat up the pan you won from an office lottery, or any other kind of pan, and pour two table spoon of olive oil. Use at least the 30cm diameter pan, because it is going to get ugly. Just kidding. But seriously the mixture will be quite a lot. Generally, it can be used for 20 to 25 springrolls with 25x25 sheets, so, if you use smaller sheets, it will be more.
2. When it's hot enough, saute the diced onion. When the onions mellowed like your heart when listening a nostalgic tune, put in the shallots and stir until you can smell the aroma, then it's time for the garlic to join the ménage à trois fun.
3. After you think the three way needs extra fun, put in the carrot cubes, the common beans, and wait until they turn sort of translucent. Frankly, I don't know how that looks like, I just heard they said it on cooking shows. For real, I just wait until the carrots soften a bit, then I put in the mushrooms.
4. After a while, put in the canned hot spicy tuna. I used hot spicy tuna, because I'm Indonesian, we are too relaxed, so, the only kick we got is in our food. If you've been kicked way too often everyday, you may want to use regular tuna.
5. When they all mixed well, put in the vermicelli. Stir until they all mixed well. Then put in the spring onion and cilantro. Mix extra well.
6. Every great party needs a break. So, you have to cool off the mixture a while, before you roll them up.
7. When it cooled off, you can start to roll them up. For every sheet I put on one and a half table spoon of the mixture. You can freestyle the wrapping. Since I'm an old fashion, I wrapped the old fashion spring roll kind.
8. When you've done all 20 wrappings, you can deep fry it. If you're having a party, it's okay to fry them all. But if you're by yourself and just got through a tough break up, you might want to go easy on the number. I suggest to fry only 2 for every two or three days, and store the rest in the freezer.
9. Enjoy the fruit, or rather, the rolls of your labor :)

 

The story behind this recipe
One day, after being terminated from the job I really love doing which I have dedicated flesh and blood, heart and soul for most of my adult life earlier this year, I woke up wanting to do something that could make me feel good about myself.

You see, being terminated from the job you put so many efforts in for a great deal amount of time feels like a break up. The pain is like losing or breaking up with a long time boyfriend, or going through a divorce. It's like all your life you went through a routine and that this job is your reason for being, even when sometimes you hate it, you go through it anyway, because you love it more. But then, in a split second, it dumped you. You could not help feeling soppy. You have so many why's in your head. But there will never be enough answers. It cracks you.

But, then, at some point, you just have to pick yourself back into the game again. That was why I decided to do this recipe. I need to feel good about myself after wallowing about my job (which I thought will be my career). I figure I need something fresh yet comforting. So, my mind sort of then create this recipe which is based on regular spring rolls. I add up the things I love that I thought can make me happy, like tuna (Indonesian rarely put protein in their springrolls, because protein are somewhat expensive), vermicelli (Indonesians love carbs.. so, must have carbs in it.. LoL), cloud ear mushrooms (I really don't have any reasonable explanation for it) and cilantro (I'm trying to introduce flavors to my housemate, who unfortunately have such a narrow array of flavors, so, why not surprise her with the most unfamiliar flavor of cilantro.

But, like everything else in life, this recipe needs to be balanced. I have to put in the things I don't really like in order to savour and cherish on the things I do like. So, I put in carrots. I hate carrots because my mother used to force-feed me with it. But, it does give great color contrast to the food.

So, that's my story.