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.

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.