Crispy Meat and Seafood Rolls

by Kathleen Morrison

Servings:

INGREDIENTS

Basket garnish (optional):
1 tsp. sesame oil
6 sm. crabs
150 grams potato
Cornstarch
Cooking oil

Filling:
100 grams prawns, shelled
100 grams raw chicken
100 grams water chestnuts or celery
100 grams sea cucumber, soaked (optional)
100 grams mushrooms

Seasoning mixture:
1 tbsp. Chinese yellow wine or sherry
1 tbsp. cornflour
1 tsp. sesame oil
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. sugar

Legs:
50 grams bamboo shoots or carrots
300 grams pork caul lining or bean curd skin or edible rice paper)
100 grams Chinese cured ham
10 grams or 12 sprigs coriander

Coating:
4 egg whites
1 tbsp. cornflour
2 tbsp. water

Sweet sauce:
1 tbsp. Hoisin or barbecue sauce
1/2 cup water

INSTRUCTIONS

Optional basket garnish:
Steam crabs and put aside. Form potatoes into basket shapes. This can be done by peeling them into long strips, which are then interwoven and sealed with cornstarch paste. Deep-fry baskets over medium flame until golden.

Filling:
Slice all filling ingredients at an angle and cut into diamond shapes, which creates a better texture. Season with seasoning mixture.

Slice bamboo shoots into 12 strips, each 5 centimeters long and half a centimeter wide. Divide pork caul lining into 12 triangular pieces, large enough to wrap legs. Cut ham into 24 strips. Onto each pork caul lining lay one sprig of coriander, 2 strips of ham, and 1/12 of the diamond-cut filling ingredients. Place one strip of bamboo shoot on top, with half of it left outside wrapping. Fold and mould each filled pork caul lining into leg shape.

Coating:
Mix coating ingredients with 2 tbsp. water and coat each leg with the paste. Mix Hoisin sauce with water and simmer until thickened.

To cook, carefully slide legs into medium-hot oil sufficient to deep-fry all twelve at same time. Folded leg ends should face the centre of wok. Deep-fry for 3 minutes; then increase heat a little and continue deep-frying for a further 3 minutes.

To present, lay legs on a paper doily in serving dish, arranging the potato baskets and crabs as a central garnish. Serve the Hoisin sauce mixture on the side.

CHEF COMMENTS

Here's another of the Winners series. This one might be a bit time consuming, but there aren't any really exotic ingredients, and unless you get into garnishing it the way it shows in the book, it's not too much hassle.

These are mock chicken legs: a minced mixture of meat and seafood rolled up and deep-fried. I'd use the rice paper option for wrappers as they are readily available, at least around here.

The basket garnish is an incredibly fussy little number actually woven from strips of potatoes. I'd use the two sieve potato nest trick for that part if I bothered at all. The small crabs that go into the basket really are about two inches across the shell. They look neat, but add nothing to the dish aside from that.

From Champion Recipes of the 1986 Hong Kong Food Festival (Hong Kong Tourist Association, 1986).

Tagged: asian, meatandseafoodrolls add tags

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