Vegan Recipe: Chinese Five Spice Spring Rolls

Vegan Five Spice Spring Rolls

Chinese Five Spice is easily one of my favourite seasonings and I've always been a big fan of spring rolls, so when I came across Nigel Slater's recipe for Five-Spiced Pork Buns in his Real Fast Food book, I couldn't resist putting a vegan spring roll spin on it. And since I'm looking at Granose's Meat Free Lincolnshire Sausages for my Meet Your Meat Substitutes series, it seemed like a great opportunity to put the mix to the test.

The sausage mix is highly absorbent with a neutral flavouring making it perfect for Nigel's rich seasoning and really easy to work with as spring roll filling.

On this occasion I munched the spring rolls as my dinner with a nice side of Kung Fu Collard Greens, but I'm confident that these would also make an amazing wow factor vegan dinner party canape or starter.

Vegan Chinese Five Spice Spring Rolls Recipe

1 sachet of Granose Meat Free Lincolnshire Sausage Mix
143 ml water
2 cloves of garlic
2 tablespoons of dark soy sauce
2 tablespoons of lemon juice
2 teaspoons of five spice powder
2 tablespoons of runny honey
fresh black pepper
10 - 15 rice paper spring roll shells
2-3 cups of water
1 cup of bean sprouts (This could easily work with cooked carrots or cabbage or both as well)
Vegetable oil for frying

1. Pour the sausage mix into a bowl, add 143ml of water and let stand for 10 mins.
2. In the mean time, finely chop your garlic add to the mix with soy sauce, lemon juice, fives spice powder, honey and a pinch of pepper. Mix until all the flavours are evenly distributed.
3. Saute the bean sprouts until they're soft and then add into to mixture.
4. Grab a tray and fill it with just enough water to submerge one rice paper sheet at a time. Place one sheet in the water until it's fully wet, about 5 seconds, then place on to clean flat surface for filling. Scoop out one tablespoon of filling and lay left of centre in a short line. Now fold your spring rolls like a...spring roll or a tiny burrito. Wet the corners to seal.
5. Deep fry spring rolls in oil (don't use Olive Oil - it makes everything extremely oily) until brown.
6. Remove and place on a towel or rack while you cook the rest.
7. Repeat until you've got about a dozen rolls.

Meet Your Meat Substitutes: Mock Duck Review

When I started on my Meet Your Meat Substitutes journey to try out high protein vegan and vegetarian meat replacements, I knew that one day, a duck would cross my path, specifically a Mock Duck. I won't deny it, I was little bit scared of this one. Alternatives to mince, chicken, burgers, and sausages have become so common place that we take them for granted, but something as gamey as duck...and in a can? That is a bold ask. But, MYMS is about trying new things, expanding my palette and trying what's tasty, so here we go.

First question: what exactly is Mock Duck? Well, it's wheat gluten marinated in a soy based sauce and shaped into duck style pieces for use as a duck meat replacement. It was originally developed by Chinese monks and it is now available throughout the UK courtesy of the fine folks at GranoVita. And it's vegan.

Now to answer the next question: is it any good?

Review: Good
'Meatiness':
The meatiness of this meat substitute is most manifested by the it's fibrous texture, which I'll get to in a bit, and the fact that it's quite filling. It looks delicate but it's actually got a lot of body and can be marinated overnight like one would with chicken. This, combined with the dark colour of the pieces, pretty much explains where the 'duck' reference comes from.

Yep, mock duck out of the tin looks like it's been plucked!

Texture:
I have two words for you on this: Plucked duck. Yes. It's true. Your pieces of mock duck will look as if they have been plucked before they were canned. At first, I found this to be both perplexing and off putting, but as this has been a part of the mock duck experience since it was a specialty item in Chinatown supermarkets, I've decided that it's charming. Once you get past the 'skin', the fibrous texture of the gluten is similar to what you would expect when you pull apart poultry. And each piece is firm and bouncy to the touch.

Taste:
Discussion on the web about Mock Duck seems to show it as a bit of a marmite meat substitute: some people love it and some people just hate it.  And like I said, I was a little bit nervous about this one. But after the first bite, the mystery was over because the truth is that mock duck tastes almost exactly like tinned Braised Tofu. And if you've never had braised tofu, then I should explain that it's got a smokey salty almost mushroomy taste. I like it, but it might not be your thing.

Mock Duck Kebabs with Grilled Mushroom on the side

Versatility:
I was having a bit of busy week and so tried mock duck in a little Grilled Mock Duck Kebab meal and in a Quick Mock Duck Coconut Stir Fry.  Both recipes are quick and easy. For the kebabs, I added the some of the marinade from the tin, soy sauce, pepper and garlic. Then I stuck them onto wet skewers, and put them on the grill. Voila! For the Stir fry, I sauteed mock duck, onions, peppers garlic and mushrooms until the onions were soft and then smothered the whole thing in coconut milk. It took about ten minutes and was mighty nice. If you've got more time, there are lots of good recipes across the web for things like Mock Duck Pancakes, Mock Duck Cashew Stir Fry, or Granovita's own Mock Duck Ragu. Fried, steamed, stewed, there are tons of things that can be done with mock duck, so it definitely scores highly there.

Overall, I was surprised by mock duck because I wasn't really expecting to like it. But it's pretty good and I'm actually looking forward to trying out the pancakes sometime soon.

Vegetarian Recipe: Chinese Five Spice Quorn & Celery Stir Fry

 

If you've never tried a vegetarian Chinese recipe with Five Spice that might be because it's most often used with meats like chicken and beef. I first tried this flavour combination when I was still eating meat, in a Beef Stew simmering in a five spice sauce for 5 hours and the flavour of the spices was something I'd never experienced before! As a vegetarian, I don't think something so wonderful should be off limits so, I've decided to try it with vegetarian meat substitute, Quorn.
 
Because it's such a staple of Chinese cuisine, 'Chinese Five Spice' or simply '5 Spice' should be available in any good international food shop though the specific blend of spices may vary. Apparently the name is a reference, not to a specific number of spices, but rather a balance of five types of flavour: sweet, sour, pungent, bitter, and salty. So while one recipe may include aniseed, fennel seed, ground cinnamon, whole cloves and whole peppercorns another might feature star anise or cumin or ginger. The mix that I used, was mostly cinnamon with coriander powder, bay leave powder, star anise powder and a hint of all spice.

I chose a stir fry as a first go because it's easy to control the flavours and I had a real hankering for cooked celery! I found that the mixture actually worked alot like a curry powder in that adding a little bit of water to it made a really thick sauce. I was interested to see how Quorn worked with seasoning and was pleasantly surprised.

Vegetarian Recipe: Chinese Five Spice Quorn & Celery Stir Fry

Ingredients
1 tbsp cooking oil
2 celery stalks
1 spring onion or chive stalk
1 green pepper
2 cloves of garlic
1 cup of Quorn pieces or 1 cubed Quorn fillet
1 tsp of Chinese Five Spice
1 cup of water
 2 tsp vinegar
1 tsp garlic powder

Also, before beginning my prep, I put on the rice in the rice cooker, so it's all ready when the stir fry is done. 

1. Chop celery and green pepper into bite sized pieces. Finely chop green onion and garlic.
2. Heat oil in pan and add vegetables with Quorn pieces at the same time on medium heat. 
3. Cook for a few minutes until the celery begins to soften. Next add the five spice to the mixture stirring until well coated.
4. Don't let the stir fry dry out, use your cup of water (I added a few drops of soy sauce to this) to create a nice sauce by slowly adding to the mixture as it cooks.
5. Stir regularly and taste to make sure it's to your liking. If it's too sweet, add a bit of vinegar. Too bitter, add some soy sauce. I found that I need to to top up with a bit of garlic powder but key is to keep flavouring it as you go along.
6. When the rice is ready and the veg is nice an soft, then it's time to eat.