ROLL UP, ROLL UP.

In praise of the deep-fried spring roll, whether party food or dinner.

I have an overwhelming need to eat spring rolls this week, and there are five compelling reasons why. Five!

1/ TIMING. The Lunar New Year is coming up on Wednesday 29 January – I can hear the hiss of the Snake already. It is, of course, also known as the Spring Festival (which should really have the word ‘Roll’ inserted in there).

2/ SYMBOLISM. Spring rolls represent wealth and prosperity for the year to come because if you squint a lot, they look like gold bars. True symbolism requires a lot of squinting.

3/ CRAVING. I have been craving spring rolls since I downed a platterful at I Love Pho in Richmond (Melbourne), a few weeks ago, and they inserted themselves in the front of my brain and refused to leave. I do feel there should be a tee-shirt that says I Love I Love Pho. This pic is of my table, messy as.

4/ TIMING, AGAIN. This may sound weird, but to me, spring rolls are deeply Australian (and the Australia Day long weekend is upon us). As a country, we are a part of south-east Asia, both geographically and culturally, something that has seeped into everyday life and become who we are.

There’s a certain image I hold in my mind about Australia and its possibilities. It was a muggy early evening in Darwin, twenty years ago, and I was sitting on the sand with a couple of dozen tourists at Mindil Beach Sunset Market, watching the sun light up the sky with cabaret neon as it sank into the Arafura Sea.

A young Indigenous kid scampered up on top of the sand dune and sat there watching the sunset, eating a spring roll from one of the market stalls.

It made me intensely happy to be a part of this crazy, mixed-up part of the world, where people from so many different cultures could come together to sit on an ancient land eating spring rolls, in order to celebrate something bigger than all of us.

5/ THEY’RE EASY. Make the filling, roll the rolls, fry. It’s also a fun process to share with others, which is also known as ‘making them do all the work’. I don’t deep-fry very often, but hey, spring rolls. And I was pleased to see that when I strained the cooled, used oil back into the bottle, it was missing less than a tablespoon of oil.

I also prefer straight-up spring roll wrappers rather than the bubbly-bobbly rice paper wrappers, because they seem to seal better and absorb less oil.

Yes, I have tried brushing with oil and baking the rolls instead, but the result is uneven and unsatisfactory in a conventional oven, and I don’t have an air-fryer. (Should I? Even if it’s just for potato chips?)

Grasp the nettle. Fry the spring rolls.

Keep the filling simple – just minced pork and prawn, lightened with fish sauce, rice vermicelli, some shallots. Get the minced pork from an Asian butcher for extra points; it’s fattier and less processed. Maybe some fresh black fungus if you like, or some finely diced carrot.

And serve them in fresh, healthy, celebratory Vietnamese style with crisp, cold lettuce leaves, stacks of herbs and a tangy nuoc cham dipping sauce.

Feel free to muck around with the filling ingredients, but avoid anything that will shed too much moisture (eg spring onions). Too much moisture is your enemy here. When heated, it will turn into steam and force its way out, hence the urban mythology of the exploding spring roll.

We want the lunar new year to go off with a bang, but not that sort of bang.

Or ignore everything I have said here ( don’t worry, I’m used to it), and run off into your local Chinatown or equivalent Thai, Korean and Vietnamese shopping strip to support the small businesses, noodle bars and yum cha palaces there. Just be sure to order the spring rolls – and maybe a very cold, very Australian beer.

VIETNAMESE STYLE SPRING ROLLS

• 80 g cellophane (bean thread) noodles

• 250 g minced pork, preferably fatty

• 150 g fresh prawn meat, finely minced (eg from 300 g prawns in shell)

• 2 shallots, finely diced

• 2 tbsp fresh wood ear fungus, cut into matchsticks

• 1 tsp salt and half tsp white pepper

• 1 tsp sugar

• 2 tsp cornflour

• 1 tbsp fish sauce

• 2 tbsp coriander leaves, chopped

• 1 pack small spring roll wrappers, thawed

• Vegetable oil for deep-frying

• Chilled iceberg or baby cos lettuce leaves, heaps of mint and Thai basil

Cover the noodles with boiling water and leave to stand for 5 minutes or until soft enough to the bite.

Drain, squeeze dry in a tea towel, and snip into short lengths.

Mix the minced pork with the prawn meat, 1 tsp cornflour, shallot, fungus, noodles, salt, pepper, sugar, fish sauce and coriander. Do it with your hands, slapping the mix against the side of the bowl as you go. You can do this ahead of time and refrigerate if you like.

Mix remaining 1 tsp cornflour with 1 tsp water to make a paste.

Place 1 dsp of the filling in a row near the corner of a wrapper and fold the corner over the filling, pinching the filling tight.

Fold in the sides, then roll up tightly. Brush the tip with cornflour paste to help it stick. Make remaining rolls.

Heat the oil in a high-sided pan to 180C, or until a piece of bread turns golden in 10 seconds.

Cook the spring rolls in batches of 3 or 4 until golden – about 3 minutes – turning once. Check one to make sure it’s cooked inside, then roll on.

Drain on paper towel, and serve with lettuce leaves, loads of herbs and the dipping sauce.

Wrap each roll in a leaf, tuck in some herbs, dip in the sauce and eat. Makes 16.

I suggest you soak more noodles than you need, and serve them with the lettuce leaves and herbs. In fact, my trick is to assemble the leaf, the roll and the herbs, then pick up a hank of noodles with chopsticks and dip it into the nuoc cham and place that on the roll as a sort of self-saucing technique. No dipping required.

NUOC CHAM DIPPING SAUCE

• 2 tbsp finely diced carrot

• 1 finely diced garlic clove

• 1 tsp finely diced red chilli

• 3 tbsp fish sauce

• 1 tbsp rice vinegar

• 2 tbsp lime juice

• 1 tbsp brown sugar or palm sugar

• 2 to 3 tbsp water

Mix everything except the water together.

Add water by the spoonful, to taste, and refrigerate until required.

If you’re after a pork-free spring roll, try these prawn mousse rolls I developed to go with Filipino banana ketchup; they’re amazingly good.

Thanks for dropping by! And thanks for your comments and suggestions. Special thanks to my hunter/gatherer Terry for finding actual fresh wood ear fungus at the supermarket, lurking in a tray called Asian mushrooms, and small spring roll wrappers in the freezer.

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I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands and waters upon which I work, live, cook and play; the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. Thank you for sharing your culture, traditions, knowledge, spirit, art, music, humour and food traditions, allowing us all to experience a greater sense of belonging in this ancient land.