The Fiancee's Turn To Cook: Chilled Carrot Soup and Spring Rolls

If you remember from the Mad Kitchen Chef's last blog entry, the fiancee was going to cook the next meal of Chilled Carrot Soup and Spring Rolls.  That's me, Jenifleur.  And I took the challenge and had a blast cooking, after I got through a few little bumps along the road.  Let me give you a little background.

Right now, we live between two homes.  Mad KC lives in a home with a decent kitchen full of supplies, and I live in a smaller apartment and my kitchen occassional lacks a few items we need for cooking from time to time.  Usually what I don't have Mad KC has, and we shuffle between two kitchens.  Well, we did some shuffling of supplies on Friday morning, in hopes I'd have almost everything to cook with besides a few ingredients that I was to pick up at the grocery store.  So I went to the store and picked up orange juice, chicken broth, a jalepeno, and ginger for the Chilled Carrot Soup and went home.  Later, I got a text message from Mad KC who was at work.  "Honey, I forgot to pack the hand blender for the soup!"  Oops!  Long story short, I called my mother to see if she had one that I could borrow.  Nope.  No luck.  But she told me if I bought one she'd buy it from me.  Problem solved, and off to the store I went.  I picked up a nice little Hamilton Beach Hand Blender that has two speeds and a case to store it in for a very reasonable price!  With blender in hand, I was able to finish the soup.  This was the first time I've ever used a hand blender and thought this one did the trick very well!

As for the next item on the menu.  Chicken Stuffed Vegetable Spring Rolls was another item I've never made in my life!  The recipe was easy to follow, until I got to the part where you wrap the rice paper spring roll wrappers.  How the heck do you do this?!  I panicked.  I wanted to have them wrapped by the time Mad KC was done with work so we could eat fairly soon after he arrived.  Hmm.  How about YouTube I thought.  Sure enough.  I found a great how-to video.



Once I got going on making the Spring Rolls, I rather enjoyed making them.  Lucky for me this video showed me how to wet the type of crispy rice papers we had and how to roll up the spring rolls.  Piece of cake!  To spice them up and give some extra kick, I added a bit of Sriracha (HOT Chili Sauce).  And instead of using chicken, we substituted pork because that's what we had to use. 

Yeah, but how did it all taste?  It came together well.  Both items shared one same ingredient...ginger.  After Chinese Cuisine Week this week and using ginger in most of our recipes, I have to admit that I love the taste of it.  There was a light hint of ginger with the cabbage and carrots in the Spring Rolls.  And in the Chilled Carrot Soup I could taste the hint the ginger fused with the sweet coconut milk and bit of jalepeno.  It really got the pallette going!  Overall the pairing of these two recipes did well together.  (Great thinking Honey!)   And most of all, I was happy that we didn't have to order pizza on my turn in the kitchen!

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for Mad Kitchen Chef's next recipe pick!

Jenifleur (The fiancee)

The Recipes I used for Friday:

Chilled Carrot Soup - For two people, I cut this recipe in half

Chicken and Vegetable Spring Rolls - You can substitute pork for chicken or any other meat filling, if desired.  Or leave meat and substitute other veggies or peanuts for vegetarian spring rolls!

If case you are interested in the Hamilton Beach Hand Blender...