Spring Rolls – The Indian Style

Like everything else, quarantine time has it’s own pros and cons.  The positives include the quality time we get to spend with our families, which is normally impossible in the kind of lifestyles we lead. Our world has changed from super busy mode to sedentary  mode, which in this scenario is the wisest thing to do. This is the time when we have opportunities to reflect on your lifestyle, finish incomplete tasks, spend time with loved ones and best of all connect with long lost friends and relatives. On the other hand, the downside of this self – isolation is craving for the desirable food from our favourite restaurants/hawkers, parties/get-together, shopping and the list goes on. But as mentioned before, the safest option is to sit home and appreciate what we have.

There are always ways in which we can work around to solve problems, like, video call friends and have drinks over the phone, play board games with family, stand in your balcony and connect with neighbours and of course cook your favourite meals at home. That’s exactly what I did by recreating my all time favourite dish, Spring Rolls. It’s very rare to find Indian style spring rolls in Australia, even few Indian restaurants don’t serve that. So I decided to spend my time wisely and make a dish which the whole family would enjoy!

It’s very simple to make them, but few steps need to be kept in mind to get a prefect result. I started by shredding carrots and cabbage and then added some salt and kept them in a colander for the excess water to drain, this is an essential step. Now there are two methods to make sure that all water has drained, firstly you can use a plate and press the carrot and cabbage down with it inside the colander for the access water to drain out or secondly, put the veggies in a muslin cloth and squeeze to remove all excess water. But removing the water is very much needed or else you would land up with soggy spring rolls, which is a big no

Meanwhile, when the water is draining, in a bowl take plain flour, baking soda, salt, water and whisk them to make a lump free batter. It should be a smooth watery batter.

Then we will cook the veggies and season them. In this step you can use ingredients as per your liking. I made half batch without any schezwan sauce  for kids and other half with schezwan sauce. You can replace schezwan with any chilli sauce, and if you like it spicy feel free to add green chillies along with the veggies while cooking them. Also, I have used two variety of capsicum, but even using just one variety works fine and this won’t effect the taste.

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Cooking the spring roll wrapper or cover is a very quick and easy step, we just need to make sure to cook the cover only on one side. Don’t stress if you feel its not cooked well, remember we will be frying the spring rolls in the later steps.

Now assemble the cover and veggies and seal it with the same batter which we are using to make the cover.  We need to make sure that the vegetable mixture is at room temperature or the spring rolls would crack open during the frying process.

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Heat some oil in a wok/kadai, the oil needs to be heated on medium flame and has to be hot. You can test it by putting a drop of batter in the oil, if the batter rises up immediately, then the oil is ready. But if the batter settles down that indicates that the oil is not hot enough, or on the other side if the batter browns up too quickly this means the oil is too hot. So adjust accordingly or else the spring rolls would not be cooked well or absorb too much oil.

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Tada! the Indian style spring rolls are ready to be served, you can serve with your choice of condiments.