Rice paper lunch

On of our missions for the new year has been to get more organised on the food front. Obviously the big motivation for this is the arrival of the little one, who will no doubt make regular shopping and cooking a little challenging for a while. However, I have also been inspired by the Vegan Lunch Box cookbook (and blog) and have been wanting to generally be more creative with our daily food for a while.

To assist with the first issue, we went out and bought ourselves a little freezer and a bunch of decent quality containers, which are now living on our balcony ready to be filled with preprepared food (actually there is already some soup and tempeh chilli in there). For the second issue, I have been flipping through our cookbooks and pulling out a bunch of recipes that I think that we should add into our cooking routine and generally trying to think through the week ahead before we head out to the supermarket and farmers' markets. And, finally, just to make it feel a bit more fun, I have been playing with our lunches in an effort to make them a little more interesting and diverse.

So, today I thought that I would share one of my new creations with you - the rice paper lunch (with green grapes and a blueberry, lemon & corn muffin).


I have to admit that rice paper rolls are actually a very old part of our normal routine, but they are very yummy and so I wasn't going to discard them in favour of the new. The blueberry, lemon & corn muffins, on the other hand, are a fairly new addition. They come from Isa Chandra Moskowitz's 'Vegan with a Vengeance', a recent acquisition of ours that I cannot recommend enough.

I can't really share the recipe for the muffins, because it isn't mine. But here is a picture of them cooling on the rack.



The rice paper rolls, on the other hand, are totally made up by P and I (after eating many and watching them being made all over Laos). They change every time we make them, but here is the recipe for the ones in today's lunch boxes.

Ingredients:
Rice paper (from an Asian grocer, or the supermarket)
1/4 pack of Vermincilli rice noodles
150g Firm tofu (sliced into narrow strips)
1 cup small button mushrooms (quartered)
1/2 bunch of shallots (chopped finely)
1 carrot (cut into thin julienne strips)
1/2 bunch baby buk choy (chopped finely)
1 cup mung bean sprouts (washed well)
1 clove garlic (diced finely)
small square of fresh ginger (diced finely)
1 fresh chilli (diced finely)
vegetable oil
sesame seeds

Sauces:
sesame oil
lemon juice
fresh chilli - diced finely
Braggs (or soy sauce)

Instructions
Brush a wok or pan with a small amount of vegetable oil and heat over medium. Add half of the garlic, ginger & chilli. Stir for a couple of minutes and add the mushrooms. Raise heat and fry for up to five minutes adding some Braggs or soy sauce towards the end.

Repeat this process with the tofu.

Cover the carrots with a small amount of lemon juice and sesame oil and sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Fill a wide bowl or serving dish with about an inch of cold water and slide in one sheet of rice paper. Remove after about 30 seconds, it should still be a little stiff (it will soften afterwards). Lay flat on a clean surface and place a small amount of each of the ingredients in a narrow strip along the centre, leaving space up the top and bottom of the strip (I should have taken another photo of this step - I will later and add it to this post - DONE).


Dribble a teaspoon of the sauce over the ingredients so that you don't have to dip them later for flavour (this makes them more portable).

Fold the top and bottom over and then pick up one side and bring it over the strip to lay on to the other side, before rolling the remaining package into a roll.


Set aside and repeat the process.

Eat (or save for lunch).