For Christmas my sister Lena gave me a box of spices that contained a selection that would let me play around with new flavors and ideas. It contained peri peri, juniper berries, galangal, and sumac berries. This recipe was one of the first things I made with the ground galangal. It’s a Thai spice, which is an area I’m starting to explore more. A lot of the flavors and ingredients are new to me, but that’s part of the fun of experimenting.
The egg rolls are packed with vegetables, spices, and sauces that complement the fragrant galangal. The label on the bottle describes galangal as being somewhat floral, so I paired it with hoisin, white wine, and ginger.
The recipe ventures a little further into the land of “fussy” than some of my other recipes, but it’s still worth it. One of the tricks I learned is that the stuffing ingredients should be pretty dry before baking to avoid having a soggy end product. What I found worked well was propping the rimmed baking sheet up about 4 inches: one end of the sheet rested on the rim of a pot and I used our pepper mill as an anchor on the other end to prevent the sheet from sliding down. I let is sit for about 30 minutes and gravity caused the juices to pool at the bottom of the rimmed sheet. I turned the drippings into a dipping sauce (you just want to make sure you’ve thoroughly cooked any meat ingredients if you do the same. Undercooked pork juice… not so fun).
And of course I elected to bake the egg rolls, rather than fry them. Flipping them during baking helps ensure they color evenly. The wrappers are somewhat delicate, so they might tear a little bit during prep. The important thing, though, is to wrap them tightly enough to prevent the galangal-cabbage-sausage stuffing from spilling out.
Galangal-Scented Egg Rolls
Ingredients
2 sausage links
1-inch ginger, grated
3 cloves garlic
1/2 cup carrots, shredded
1/2 cup white wine
1/2 Tablespoon soy sauce
1 Tablespoon hoisin sauce
10 ounces cabbage, shredded
2 green onions
1 Tablespoon rice vinegar
Prepared egg roll wrappers
Steps
1. Cook the sausage links in a skillet over medium heat, breaking up the links into chunks. Using a slotted spoon, remove from pan, reserving the oil. Heat the oil again and add the ginger and garlic and brown for 2-3 minutes.
2. Add the carrots, white wine, soy sauce, hoisin sauce, cabbage, green onions, and rice vinegar. Cook for at least 10 minutes. The cabbage should release its water and become soft. You’ll also want to simmer the mixture to reduce the cooking liquid.
3. Transfer the cabbage mixture to a rimmed baking sheet, tip the sheet at a 45-degree angle, and allow the liquid to pour of the cabbage. Reserve the liquid to use as a dipping sauce. 4. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Spoon a scant 2 Tablespoons into an egg roll wrapper and wrap tightly. Bake for 10-minute intervals, flipping the egg rolls half way.
