I just served spring rolls for lunch. When I say that, *I* mean I use the big sheet of rice noodle, soak it in water for half a minute, lay it on a board, fill it with savory goodies, roll it up snug and tight, and serve as is, with a dipping sauce.
Wikipedia tells me
"spring roll" has a
much broader meaning -- and this probably accounts for why I have occasionally ordered spring rolls at restaurants and gotten things quite different from what I described (typically things that I would normally call egg rolls, but whatever).
In today's lunch, I prepared four dishes of fillings: 1) crumbled tofu that was bought firm, frozen, thawed, pressed, and marinaded in vegan "fish sauce" mixed with crumbled toasted peanuts and diced jalapeno, 2) chopped cilantro and Thai basil blossoms and rosettes, 3) cucumber matchsticks, 4) mung bean sprouts. That's a pretty typical set of fillings we use, but also whatever we have as leftovers I want to use up is common. The dipping sauce is custom-made each time and today's was from peanut butter, minced Fresno chiles, a ton of minced garlic, simple syrup, shoyu, mirin, rice wine vinegar (and it came out too thick).
So that's me. What does spring roll mean to you? What do you like to put inside?
