Britt's Blog

Every once in a while, it’s a good thing to just surrender yourself to a Big Damn Project.

We were invited to a Film Food potluck, where you bring a dish to pass inspired by a movie. In a move that is either sheer genius, or totally gross, I decided to make prawn spring rolls in honor of District 9.

This turned into a Big Damn Project.

First of all, I’ve been working my butt off, since last week was the first week of classes, so, naturally, other than hatching the brilliant/disgusting shrimp/ethnic-slur idea, I didn’t really plan ahead at all, except to get up Saturday morning and go to the store to get all the ingredients, and figure it out from there.

So I hit Woodmans bright and early and got a couple of pounds of frozen wild American shrimp. All those adjectives sounded positive to me (wild! American! USA! USA! USA!), and Monterrey Bay Aquarium says American shrimp are a “good” choice, sustainability-wise.

Rice paper was a bit of a problem. I’d seen it at Woodmans before, so I didn’t think it’d be a problem, but when I got there, the spot on the shelf was empty. An inquiry at Customer Service yielded no rice paper; they were totally out.

I persevered. The internets told me that I could thaw my shrimp by immersing the bag in cold water for an hour. So that’s what I did, while going for a run. When I got back, I started pressing some tofu, for some vegetarian spring rolls.

I then learned how to peel and devein shrimps from the internets. This is a culinary skill I have so far avoided. Jason doesn’t eat shrimp, so I usually eat them at restaurants. Verdict on peeling and deveining shrimp: Pretty fun an interesting for the first pound, but after that, kinda repetitive. Luckily, Bill spun some Harry Belefonte on Radio Paradise at the pound-and-a-half mark, and morale improved considerably.

I also learned that the thaw-shrimp-for-one-hour-in-cold-water thing was a lie, and had to thaw most of the shrimp under warm running water to get the shells off. Hard to do a veinectomy on a shrimp that’s frozen solid.

While the shrimp and tofu marinated, I ran down to Valli, where they were sure to have rice paper. But it’s a long way to go for a couple of bucks worth of rice paper, isn’t it? Clearly there needed to be a side trip to the yarn store to justify the fuel use! Valli had the ricepaper. No luck at the yarn store, though. (I’m starting to wonder if I’m nuts for wanting solid-colored machine-washable sock yarn. Doesn’t anyone else in the world like fair isle socks? I guess I’m stuck ordering it online, but that gives me the heebie jeebies, because you can’t hold the colors next to each other and know for sure how they’re going to work together.)

For once, my timing was perfect. When I came home, I match-sticked some carrots and blanched them, prepped the rest of the ingredients, and then put together the tofu rolls. I used the tofu rolls as a chance to get the kinks out, figure out how long to soak the rice paper, how much stuffing to use, etc. Then I moved on to cooking the shrimp and making the shrimp rolls.

Verdict on rice paper: A++++++++++ WOULD ROLL AGAIN! It’s tons of fun, not that hard to work with, and the results are gorgeous. I’m tempted to eat all my food in translucent little packets from now on.

The spring rolls, both tofu and shrimp, were a big hit at the party, and everyone who’d seen District 9 thought the prawn thing was hilarious. Yay! The party was marvelous, with all kinds of fantastic food. I really like the caviar on blinis (forgot the movie on that one—I didn’t know it), and there was some Moroccan beef stew (Casa Blanca). The more sculptural entries were salmon mousse in the shape of Devils Tower, and chilled “monkey brains” (actually ice cream in a creatively modified coconut.) There were a bunch of Julie and Julia dishes, which makes me think I need to see the movie, and/or learn more about French cooking. Which could lead to another Big Damn Project.