Adventures in Cooking with Galina (Take Two)

You may recall earlier this year when my friend Galina came over to watch Slings & Arrows, and I chilled chocolate-dipped strawberries in such a way that the chocolate coating remained largely on the serving platter.  Well, Galina came over again (for more Slings & Arrows!) and this time, inspired by the incredible early success of the pork potstickers, decided to make greasy Chinese food again.

Things rarely turn out how you plan.

I should have known to switch gears when I stopped by Whole Foods and found not only no ground pork (settling for ground turkey instead) but also no wonton wrappers (settling for a package of clear spring roll wrappers whose packaging and instructions were entirely in Japanese).

Everything seemed all right at first, but when I went to wrap the ground turkey mixture with the spring roll wrappers, it became evident that the clear, gummy shells were not going to either A) crisp up to the satisfying fried goodness of previous incarnations or B) remain in one piece around the stuffing mixture.

So we ended up with a pan of fried meat lumps and gelatinous skin sheddings.

Which was kind of gross.  

Galina's a good sport, though, and pointed out that her family cooks a Russian dish which is basically fried meat lumps.  And the shrimp fried rice I'd thrown together as a main course came out reasonably delicious, so I suppose all's well that ends well.

This is a remarkably simple recipe courtesy of Food Network's Ellie Krieger: sauté chopped spring onion and ginger in a little sesame oil, then add four cups chopped fresh cabbage and a pound of shrimp and cook until the shrimp is pink.  Remove all of this from the pan, add a little more sesame oil, and fry two cups (cold) brown rice.  Put the shrimp and cabbage mix back into, toss it all together, and serve hot.