Last week, one of our fellow missionaries returned to Cameroon from a short trip to the States. She brought with her all kinds of goodies, including some spring roll wrappers that she found while cleaning out her mother’s house. She gave those to our household. As a result, Ellen and I were inspired to have a Chinese-themed cooking class tonight.
I decided to make lo-mein to go with our spring rolls. I sifted through several recipes online until I found one that I was interested in. Obviously, there are many ingredients that we can’t get out here. Thankfully, there is a wonderful tool called the internet. I was able to find all of the substitution recipes I needed to make the recipe work. After making barbeque sauce and Chinese 5 spice from scratch to go into my homemade hoisin sauce, I felt quite accomplished. I’ve come to realize that I love the challenge of finding a good substitute for hard-to-get ingredients. It is such a satisfying feeling when a dish turns out despite not having the proper ingredients.
The spring rolls were a different story, however. Forgive my ignorance, but I didn’t realize the vast difference between egg roll wrappers and spring roll skins. In case you fall into the ignorance category with me, let me clarify—there is a HUGE difference between the two. In my mind, spring rolls were just made with a different filling. However, the big difference comes in the consistency of the wrappers. Egg roll wrappers are those golden crispy wrappers; spring roll skins are the gummy, chewy wrappers. Spring rolls, while they can be fried, do not have to be. That fact was quite a redeeming factor for us. Our spring rolls did not want to stay together in the hot oil, so after frying just a few, we gave up. The result wasn’t quite what either Ellen or I had imagined, but our cooking crew seemed to enjoy the results.
All in all, while the food didn’t turn out quite the way we pictured it would, we had a great time at cooking class. We definitely all learned something new tonight too.
