Harlow Chinese School – Spring and Summer Rolls

The Harlow Chinese School does a cooking club every few months as a fundraiser for the school itself. It’s always a very community feeling thing, where Sun Yung teaches us all about a bit of food from Chinese culture, and we enjoy eating it and making it. This class is always very family friendly and enjoyable, without having to do too much cooking, and with a big focus on community and eating! This time, the course was very quick in time, as the summer rolls were the only thing that really needed cooking. They actually brought out some pre-made spring rolls to snack on, while we waited for ours to cook.

The spring rolls were deep fried, with the filling already made. It had a bunch of vegetables in it, along with some shredded chicken and some seasonings and oils. The whole thing was in a massive bowl, and we got massive wrappers to create our spring rolls, sealing them with flour and water in the end. We made eight massive rolls each, as Sun explained that eight is a lucky number on Chinese culture, and showed us the shape of an L in Chinese. We also got to make four large summer rolls and four small summer rolls, also equally eight. The filling inside the spring rolls was a bit more hearty, as these rolls are deep fried.

The summer rolls, on the other hand, were rolled in rice paper which needed to be dunked in water to make them soft enough to roll. The filling was vegetarian, with rice noodles and other bits of salad, along with vinegar and seasonings. It was a more refreshing, healthy, light roll, though these don’t save so we needed to eat them as we made them. For many of the people who attended the Harlow Chinese School cooking club had not ever made this type of roll before. It’s quite fun learning with others! Many of the people who have attended have come to more than one club, so it does feel like such a fun, big community.

We had an entire dip station as well! Dann made together a nice dip for us out of chili oil, vinegar, and soy, which dipped very well into both of the rolls that we made for the day. We ended up extremely full and brought home the majority of the fried rolls, which were fried by the staff there. There is only one more of these clubs before the end of the school year, as the Harlow Chinese School cooking club only runs during the school year, and it’s more of a feast then a cooking class – we are super excited for it.

You can check out our other Days Out to see what else we’ve been up too!