Tofu Spring Rolls

My favorite restaurant in Pittsburgh, somewhat regrettably, is Pho Minh on Penn Avenue in Garfield. It is a family-run Vietnamese joint with excellent food, and it’s BYOB. While I’ve always dined there without incident, I have heard stories of many insane things happening there. Here is the building. I did not take this picture.

My friend Matt tells a story about walking by Pho Minh with a friend of his, who was saying that she thought the place was shady. Matt responded, “Come on, it isn’t that bad,” just as someone was thrown up against the window inside. I really like Pho Minh.

But none of this is the point. The point is that they have some of the best tofu spring rolls I have ever had, and I decided to try to replicate them.

For this, you will need:

About a ½ pound of extra firm tofu
Hoisin sauce
Soy sauce
Spring roll wrappers
Mai fun rice noodles, cooked according to package directions and then chopped
Cucumbers, cut into very thin planks
Carrots, grated
Cilantro, chopped
Spinach
Sesame seeds (optional)

Start by pressing the tofu and cutting it into slabs about a half inch thick, a half inch wide and two inches long. You can always cut them smaller after cooking them; you just don’t want them to fall apart in the pan. Brush them with hoisin sauce and start heating a skillet—we’re going to sear them.

Once the skillet is nice and hot (it’s important that it be dry, so make sure to use a nonstick pan), throw your tofu pieces in and let them cook. This caused a ridiculous amount of smoke in my kitchen, so I turned on the stove fan. It didn’t help much, eventually Rob came down and threw the back door open and glared at me, shivering. Whatever, the tofu was good.

Don’t move it around too much, but flip after a few minutes. There’s really no science to this, just keep your eye on it. Once it’s all cooked, put the pieces on a plate and pop them in the fridge to cool.

Now, get a large bowl of hot water—not so hot you can’t stick your hands in it, but hot nonetheless. Take one spring roll wrapper and submerge it in the water until it gets pliable and sticky. Spread it on your work surface and top with a few tofu slabs, some noodles, cucumber, carrots, lots of cilantro and a few leaves of spinach, just for crunch. Roll the bottom part over the pile of goodness and then fold the sides in and roll all the way up. You’ll have to work quickly, as the spring roll wrappers might get a little gunky. This takes a bit of practice, but you’ll get the hang of it.

MMMHMMM.

Here is the inside:

For the dipping sauce, I just mixed hoisin sauce with soy sauce to my taste, and then added some sesame seeds for garnish. This was not nearly as good as Pho Minh’s, but I have no idea what is in theirs. I know, if I were smart, I’d have put it in a light colored bowl so you could see it. I really need some new dishes.

All in all, it was a good meal, although I couldn’t eat nearly as many of them as I thought I could. Rob (who also loves Pho Minh, but he digs the beef soup thing) gave it eight hot dogs.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 31st, 2008 at 12:29 pm and is filed under Appetizers, Asian, Main Dishes, Tofu, Vegan, Vegetarian. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.