Phyllo Spring Rolls Recipe

This has been a year full of food blogging challenges for me – first the Robertsons Spicemaster cook-off and now Freshly Blogged from PicknPay, where 50 or so bloggers are given a mystery list of ingredients and have to come up with an original recipe. It’s online, it’s over 11 weeks and the last three in compete in a cook-off at Taste of Joburg in September. You get to vote for your favourite recipes at the Freshly Blogged website and there are weekly prizes up for grabs, both for voters and bloggers, but three foodie judges decide who goes through and who is for the chop!

The first challenge had us all madly tweeting over the weekend as we trawled Cape Town’s PicknPay stores for the elusive garlic, ginger and dhania paste. I tracked mine down without too much stress along with the Findus Thai Wok frozen veg, the PnP phyllo pastry, orange and pineapple. We were allowed to omit one ingredient and I dumped the two-minute noodles, which I am deeply suspicious of as a form of nutrition, and added as my one extra ingredient peanuts. These easy phylllo spring rolls were what I came up with.

If you like the sound of them please vote for my recipe on the Freshly Blogged site! The recipe and inspiration as posted for the competition follow:

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A palm shaded warung on a family holiday in Bali, serving crisp spring rolls with peanut sauce to dip into. My kids eagerly tucked into what were essentially parcels of exotic vegetables that they’d never even consider eating in any other format. It’s the delicate crispness of the roll that lures them to overlook all that vegetable goodness within.

 So when Thai vegetables and phyllo pastry were the main ingredients of the first Freshly Blogged challenge, it was spring rolls that immediately ‘sprung’ to mind: oven baked in phylllo pastry for easy cooking and with a pineapple and peanut dipping sauce inspired part by sweet/savoury fresh Indian fruit chutneys and part by the more traditional peanut sambals of Indonesia. These spring rolls are a creative (if not very  authentic) interpretation of a holiday memory of those Balinese spring rolls, possibly the only way of convincing my kids to munch through any amount of shredded vegetables. I hope your kids, and adults, will enjoy them too!

Recipe for Phyllo Spring Rolls with Pineapple and PeanutSauce

Ingredients

250g (half pack) of PnP phyllo pastry

For spring rolls

500g Findus Thai Wok frozen vegetables

2-3 teaspoons PnP crushed garlic, ginger and dhania

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 tablespoons fresh orange juice

Salt and pepper

For sauce

1 cup chopped fresh pineapple

1/3 cup salted peanuts

1 teaspoon PnP crushed garlic, ginger and dhania

1 ½  teaspoons dark brown sugar

1 teaspoon vegetable oil

Salt and pepper

Makes 12-16 rolls

The night before you plan to cook these, put the frozen phyllo pastry in the fridge to defrost. Take the packet out of the fridge the next morning two hours before you plan to use it to bring to room temperature, otherwise the sheets will stick together..

Make the sauce by putting all the ingredients into a mug and processing with a stick blender until smooth. Check seasoning and adjust to taste.

Heat your wok until piping hot, add the 2 tablespoons oil, it should be just starting to smoke. Put in the garlic, ginger and dhania paste, immediately followed by the frozen vegetables and stir quickly together. Add a squeeze of orange juice and  stir-fry for 5-7 minutes until the vegetables are starting to become tender but still retain some crunch. If there is too much liquid in the bottom of the wok, drain it off. Leave the vegetables to cool before making the spring rolls. Refresh them just before using with another squeeze of orange juice.

Pre-heat the oven to 190C.

Take one roll of pastry from the packet. Unroll it carefully and cut it into three strips of approximately 12 cm wide. Take one piece of pastry and cover the rest. Put a spoonful of cooked vegetables at the narrow end nearest to you. Fold the sides in over the filling by 1 cm and roll up around the filling. Brush with oil to seal at the end and brush the whole roll with a light coating of oil. Place on a baking tray and continue to make the rest of the rolls. If you prefer thicker, more sturdy rolls use two sheets at a time.

Bake for 15 minutes until the edges are golden and the rolls are crisp.

Allow to cool for 5 minutes before serving with the pineapple and peanut sauce to dip.

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I’m busy creating a recipe for the second Freshly Blogged challenge already, which I’ll post here next week, then I hope to stay in for at least a few more rounds (or even right to the end!) as I’m enjoying the stimulus of coming up with new things every week!

Please vote for this recipe here - I'd very much appreciate it and will love you for ever!

NB for my non-South African readers: dhania is coriander/cilantro.