Baked spring rolls

Due to unfortunate circumstances and the economy, I am no longer working at my former employer. Sadly, this means that I won't be able to post as many times as I would like (food costs would be very high if I made everything I wanted to!); however, I will do at least one post a week. 

A couple weeks ago I prepared red curry noodles with fish and made these spring rolls as the side dish.  Unlike other spring rolls, these differ in that phyllo dough is the wrapper! The result? A crispy, buttery shell with a full flavored filling. 

Baked spring rolls

Recipe from wbrzuchu.blogspot.com 

Cooking time: 45 minutes

Yield: 8 servings

Ingredients

400 grams filo pastry

350 g ground beef (such as roast beef, Silverside, or shoulder)

2 tsp peanut oil

1 medium carrot, finely chopped

1 tbsp paprika

1 onion, finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

2-3 cm ginger, minced

1 tbsp chopped chilies

1 tsp sugar cane 

3 tsp soy sauce

2 tsp fish sauce

salt and pepper

150 grams rice noodles

60 grams butter

1 handful parsley, finely chopped

Directions

1. Two hours before preparing the spring rolls, thaw the frozen filo pastry dough. 
2. Heat a large saute pan over medium heat and add the ground beef. Season with salt and pepper. When the beef is no longer pink, remove from heat and reserve in a separate bowl. In the same pan, add the onion, paprika, chili, garlic, and ginger. Season with salt and pepper. After two minutes, add the carrots and chopped chilies, sauteing for an additional 2 minutes.
3. Return the meat back to the pan and season the filling with the sugar, soy  sauce, and fish sauce.   Cook for 3 minutes and finish with the parsley. Remove from heat and set aside.
4. Prepare the rice noodles according to the directions on the package. Using scissors, cut the noodles into smaller pieces and mix with the meat and vegetable filling. 
5. Melt the butter either on the stove top or the microwave and let it slightly cool.
6. To assemble the spring rolls, cut the filo dough into a square (used the dimensions 19 cm x 19 cm). Lay out one sheet and brush on the melted butter. Carefully lay another sheet directly on top and brush with more butter. Lay one last sheet on top. 
7. Position the filo sheets so that one corner is facing you; it should look like a diamond. Put one spoonful of the meat filling towards the bottom corner of the filo dough. Spread more butter on the edges of the filo sheets and roll up the spring rolls. Fold in the two corners as you would an envelope and continue rolling the spring roll. Brush butter on the end seam of the spring roll. 
8. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. 
9. Place the spring rolls seam side down on a lined baking sheet. Bake at 400 degrees for 10-12 minutes or until they are golden brown. Serve warm.

Nutritional Analysis:
per serving: 350 calories, 16.7g fat (0.9g saturated, 6.5g polyunsaturated, 9.3g monounsaturated),  33.2g carbohydrates, 1.6g fiber, 15.5g protein

Sweet and Sour sauce 

Cooking time: 10 minutes

Ingredients

5 tbsp sugar cane

2 tbsp rice vinegar

1 tsp lemon juice

3 tbsp water

1/2 tsp fish sauce

1 tsp chopped chilies

Directions

1. Put all of the ingredients in a saucepan and cook over low heat to dissolve the sugar. Once the sugar has dissolved and the sauce has thickened, remove from heat and serve in a bowl. 

**Helpful tips and common mistakes

Since the original recipe for these spring rolls was in Polish, boy did I have a hard time understanding the directions! I have to say, Google translate doesn't make clear language translations. I did the best of my ability to translate it for you above, but after reading what I believed the directions were, I did make some changes.

The original recipe says to first brown the beef, remove from heat, add the vegetables, and than add the beef again. I skipped these steps and simply cooked everything all at once.

Heat oil in your saute pan. Add the onions, garlic, ginger, chili pepper (I used jalapeno) and carrots. When the vegetables soften, about 2 minutes, add the ground beef (I used ground chuck) and season with salt and pepper. Break up the meat with a spatula and cook until the meat is no longer pink. 

Add the remaining seasonings including the paprika, fish sauce, soy sauce, and sugar. Adjust taste with salt and pepper. I went ahead and added double the amount of the fish sauce, soy sauce, and sugar. I wanted my filling to have lots of flavor since it is the only flavor component of the spring rolls. 

Allow the filling to cool before assembling the spring rolls! Filo dough is very thin and can easily rip. When the juices of the filling are still permeating throughout, it can wet the dough and make it very difficult to make the rolls.

When you are ready to assemble the spring rolls, I am going to warn you, have patience. Some of the filo dough at the market can be not as fresh and will tend to be dry. If the sheets are too dry, they will crack very easily. On the other hand, if the sheets get wet, they will stick together and make it extremely frustrating to separate. The downside is you never know the condition of the filo dough until you purchase the box and open it at home! So have patience when preparing these spring rolls.

Be careful when rolling the dough. Make sure you don't have freshly manicured nails or it will poke through the dough! The spring rolls may feel very thick because you are using three sheets, but they will taste great. I actually had to start using only two sheets because I was running out, and the end result wasn't that different than if I used three sheets. 

You can prepare these spring rolls the day before, or even a couple days before and freeze them. Just make sure they are not touching each other when freezing or they will stuck to one another.

I wanted to have an even golden brown color on the spring rolls so I brushed on butter prior to baking. Because my spring rolls were frozen, they took about 25 minutes to bake in 400 degrees F. 

I did not make any changes to the sauce.

These spring rolls are incredibly tasty fresh from the oven. The outside is so crispy and buttery while the filling delivers on the flavor. I could even eat them without any sauce, although the sauce was tasty. The spring rolls may have been a big pain to make, but when the end result is fantastic, it makes it that much more worthwhile. Enjoy fresh because they will not stay crispy hours later!