Egg Rolls Part 1: Variations Around the World

Americans might as well be speaking a different language. I learnt this the hard way (as Genie of Bunny. Eats. Design. reminded me) when I blindly followed a recipe for chilli sin carne, and dutifully emptied two cups of tomato sauce into what, up until that point, was a delicious pot of beans and vegetables. In case you were wondering, what we call tomato sauce is similar to what Americans would call "ketchup".  My promising meal became a disgusting, sweet and sickly mess.

NZ English	American English	Description
tomato sauce	ketchup	Seasoned tomato purée - sweet and tangy, frequently eaten with hot chips and burgers.
pasta sauce	tomato sauce	Seasoned tomato purée - savoury, frequently eaten with meatballs and pasta.

It's not so bad when they use a completely different term altogether, like "zucchini" instead of "courgette", or "rutabaga" instead of "swede" (actually, I thought "aubergine" for "eggplant" and "mangetout" for "snow pea" were also American expressions, but apparently they are from British English). What really gets things confusing is when a word you are familiar with gets used to mean something else.  Here are some more examples:

NZ English	American English	Description
scone	biscuit	Soft quickbread made of flour and baking powder or soda, frequently eaten with butter and jam.
biscuit	cookie	Sweet, hard and dry baked product, with many variations, such as chocolate biscuits and gingernuts.
jam	jelly	Sweet spread or preserve made from fruit and sugar boiled to a thick consistency.
jelly	jello	Translucent fruit-flavoured dessert made to set using gelatine.

So What's an Egg Roll?

It wasn't until I tried to look for a recipe for "egg rolls" that I realised how many different things the term can mean.  Suppose I tell you that I am going to be bringing egg rolls for shared lunch tomorrow.  What would you expect to see?  Something sweet or savoury, crispy or soft?

A. 

Cooked egg (boiled and mashed, or fried) in a bread roll, which has been sliced in half.
Maybe something like a bacon and egg roll, minus the bacon.

Recipe: Ham and Egg Roll (More Than Words blog)
Recipe: Egg Mayo & Watercress Rolls (Good Food Magazine, April 2011) [Link added 22 June 2016 to replace broken link for Egg Mayo Mini Rolls (http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/5765/egg-mayo-mini-rolls, BBC Good Food - Olive Magazine, April 2008)]

B.

Cooked egg (baked whole, or mashed) in a hollowed out bread roll.

Recipe: Baked Beans, Bacon and Egg Rolls (Woman's Day magazine) [Link updated 22  June 2016 from http://recipefinder.msn.co.nz/article.aspx?id=8284773]
Recipe: Baked Egg Rolls (Modaretto blog)
[Updated 22 June 2016: removed broken link to Sesame Egg Rolls (http://recipefinder.msn.co.nz/recipes/womensweekly/742983/sesame-egg-rolls, Australian Women's Weekly magazine)]

C.

An omelette which has been rolled up, with or without a filling such as meat and/or vegetables.

Recipe: Baked Cheesy Egg Roll (Allrecipes.co.uk)
Recipe: Korean Egg Roll - 계란말이 Gyeran Mari (K Food Addict blog)
Recipe: Egg Roll with Fish Paste (Elinluv blog)

D.

A spring roll, which became popularised as egg rolls in America.  According to Dear Dim Sum [Updated 22 June 2016 to remove broken link to http://deardimsum.com/2011/04/12/spring-roll-or-egg-roll-%E6%98%A5%E5%8D%B7%E8%BF%98%E6%98%AF%E8%9B%8B%E5%8D%B7/], spring rolls are those of the soft rice paper variety to Americans, but I'm not so sure—spring rolls are always deep-fried variety in my book.  Otherwise, they would be called summer rolls or fresh rolls.

Recipe: My Mother's Famous Chinese Egg Rolls (Steamy Kitchen blog)
Recipe: Egg Rolls (Sara Moulton, Food Network)

E.

A sweet, flaky, tube-shaped roll eaten in Hong Kong and the southern parts of China.  The most famous in Hong Kong are those produced by Duck Shing Ho, where people queue as early as 4-5 months in advance to get their supplies for Chinese New Year!  (Not sure if something was lost in translation, but it looks like you can buy an egg roll machine [Updated 22 June 2016 to remove broken link to http://www.cloudol.net/goods/6137/%E7%87%83%E6%B0%94%E8%9B%8B%E5%8D%B7%E6%9C%BA] for less than 2,000 Chinese yuan, or a ridiculously cheap NZ$40!)

Recipe: Love Letters / Egg Rolls - 鸡蛋卷 (wery nice blog)
Recipe: Hand Made Egg Roll 香脆手工蛋卷 (more than bread blog) [Link added 22 June 2016 to replace broken link for Biscuit (Egg) Rolls - 手工蛋卷 (http://www.wretch.cc/blog/limpepsi/24131248, limpepsi's blog)]

F.

Fried egg wrapped inside a paratha flatbread, a street food originating in Kolkata, India.

Recipe: Kolkata Egg Roll (Bong Mum's Cookbook blog)
Recipe: Egg Roll: a Wrap Around the Streets of Kolkata (Food Wanderings blog)

G.

Chopped boiled egg, rolled up in sandwich bread, like an asparagus roll.

Recipe: Chicken and Egg Rolls (Mountain Bread.com.au) [Updated 22 June 2016 to remove broken link to http://www.mountainbread.com.au/cgi-bin/index.pl?menu_id=56]
Recipe: Egg Roll Sushi (http://food.ninemsn.com.au)

H.

Hard-boiled egg, wrapped in flour and/or meat and deep-fried, similar to a scotch egg.  The Nigerian version is sweet.

Recipe: Nigerian Egg Roll (All Nigerian Recipes.com)
Recipe: Sri Lankan Egg Rolls (Peter Kuravita, SBS.com.au) [Link updated 22 June 2016 from http://www.sbs.com.au/food/recipe/13407/egg_rolls]
Recipe: Stuffed Egg Rolls (Spice India Online blog)

---

My New Zealand workmates had no idea what an egg roll was, but suggested it could be like an asparagus roll (G. above) or perhaps a bacon and egg roll without the bacon (A.).  Americans I spoke to didn't think they could mean anything other than spring rolls (D.).  To be honest, the first time I heard of the spring roll meaning was when I tried to google "egg roll recipes", so it's surprising to me how difficult it is to find anything about any other kind of egg roll.

What does an egg roll mean to you?  Are there other meanings than what I have listed above?

Posts in this series

• Egg Rolls Part 1: Variations Around the World
• Egg Rolls Part 2: Sweet Flaky Egg Rolls (蛋卷, or Biscuit/Cookie/Wafer Rolls) 
• Egg Rolls Part 3: Recipe for Handmade Sweet Flaky Egg Rolls (手工蛋卷)

Europe Eating: Confusion at the Table

Going overseas is a very humbling experience, especially when you turn up at a country unable to speak the local language, and unsure of local customs.  But that's also what makes it an adventure.  Combine it with great food and good company, and in most cases, your mistakes will just be something to laugh about afterwards.

Here are a few stories I could tell about our recent trip to Europe, via Seoul...

Seoul: Just One Please

We were at the huge Noryangjin Fisheries Wholesale Market, where, although not hungry, we felt obliged to try the freshest fish possible.  We had no idea which restaurant upstairs was good, so when the staff at one place called out "sashimi" (along with some Chinese words of encouragement), we decided to go in.  Too late, we discovered that the sashimi would cost around NZ$80, which would probably have been far too much food for us to eat.  Instead, we perused the menu and looked for something more suitable for a light meal.

We decided to get a portion of the crab soup, the first item on the menu.
Waitress: Sorry, no.
Us (looking at each other): There's no soup available?
Waitress: Cannot one.  Must soup two.
Us: Oh, but we only want one.
Waitress: One, no. Two, OK.

We were pretty bewildered at this.  The soup cost something like NZ$25 and we thought it was splashing out a bit already.  If you have been to Seoul, you would know that food there is generally pretty cheap, less than its equivalent in New Zealand.  What a tourist trap!  we thought, silently cursing ourselves for randomly walking into a place like this.  We scanned the menu desperately for something more reasonable, but everything was either boring or even more expensive, so we ordered the soup anyway.

Did we just spend $50 on soup? we asked each other.  OMG, OMG, OMG, wailed the scrooge in me.  But there was nothing we could do.  We were there, we had ordered, there was no use worrying about it now.

The complimentary side dishes came out. Not only was it high-quality food, the portions were huge.  From a seaweed salad, to silken tofu with a drizzle of sauce on top, to the obligatory kimchi, there was more than we could eat already.  Good from a value point of view, not so good when you don't have much of an appetite.

The rice came out, then finally, the soup.  Set on a gas burner, it arrived in a giant pot with huge chunks of fish in it, not a crab in sight.  And on top, sat a pungent vegetable I knew of as tong ho.  Our hearts sank.  This was a fail on so many levels.  This was surely at least two portions, and there was no way we could finish it. We would be spending a small fortune, and to top it off, we seem to have ordered the wrong soup as well!

Large pot of Korean fish soup, set on a burner.

It wasn't until we went to pay the bill that we finally worked out what had happened.  The lady didn't mean that we had to order two soups.  What she was trying to say was that soup number one, the crab one, wasn't available, but soup number two, the fish one, was.  That pot of soup was clearly not intended for one person, but for the whole table.

Istanbul: Tale of Two Figs

On our last day in Istanbul (our first destination in Europe), we got up extra early to check out the Inebolu Sunday Market, which according to the Guardian was "an Anatolian culinary carnival located in the downtown grime of Beyoğlu's Kasimpaşa district", a highlight for "genuine Istanbul foodies".  The ferry north wasn't running for some reason, and we weren't sure we trusted taking the bus (we had no idea where to buy the tickets, when it would come, or whether we had really been told the right bus number), so we walked the 3 km or so there. (Of course, if we had done our research beforehand, we probably wouldn't have stayed in the touristy Old City in the first place.)

I had expected a major international city like Istanbul to be open all the time, like other big cities in Asia, but as we took the refreshingly cool walk to the market, nearly all the shops we passed were shuttered and closed.  Our map led us to what looked like a nondescript little lane, more like a place you could get mugged than a treasure trove of culinary delights, but as we neared, we began seeing people with bags of groceries and finally, some stalls.

It wasn't a large market, with about the same number of traders as the Wesley Community Centre Market (a.k.a. Sandringham Market) here, but with smaller quantities of everything.  I admired how huge the heads of cabbage were, and how rustic the sellers made the eggs look, sitting in hay in woven baskets.  There were various forms of breads, olives, cheeses and jams, as well as fresh fruits and vegetables.  I wish I had tried harder to learn basic Turkish, as I would have loved to have found out more about the various products.

Since we were planning to leave that day, we couldn't go on a shopping spree.  But I also didn't want to leave empty-handed.  I decided to buy a couple of figs to try—if Turkish tomatoes were anything to go by, these would be packed with flavour and an absolute joy to eat.

Me (holding up two fingers, then pointing at the pile of figs): I'd like two figs, please. How much would that be?
Seller (holding up four fingers): Dört lira.  Four lira.

Wow, that's pricey, I thought to myself, but, well, no worse than if I'd bought them in New Zealand.  Maybe they are particularly delicious.  I handed over the money.

The seller put a handful of figs into a bag, then another handful.  And that's when I realised that I had purchased two kilos of figs, rather than just two.  I considered stopping him at one kilo, but as I had already paid for the full amount, and it would be too hard to explain anything in my non-existent Turkish, I waited, took the bag with a smile, and thanked him.  I gave away a lot of figs that day.

Quite a few more than two figs.

Rome: Tips for a Great Meal

We found ourselves at a restaurant close to our hotel in Rome one evening, without having researched what the tipping etiquette was in Italy.  The service had been friendly and the food excellent, so we decided to play it safe and err on the side of tipping too much, giving the waiter an extra 10% above the price on the bill.  It wasn't until we got back to our hotel and had internet access that we realised that this was 10% too much, as service is already included in the form of coperto.

The next evening, we returned to the restaurant as we had promised the waiter we would.  This time we were welcomed with a bubbly aperitif to begin, before we had even decided on what to order.  The tomato and mozzarella bruschetta we chose to share as an entree was clearly up-sized when it came out, with each of us receiving our own plate.

After another delicious meal, we couldn't bear to skip dessert.  We ordered the tiramisu as recommended, and for those who needed something lighter, simply pineapple and icecream.  Except it wasn't simple-looking at all.  We didn't know if this was how pineapple was normally served, but we were very impressed with being presented an elaborately-cut wedge of the fresh fruit, complete with leaves on top and the fibrous centre pinned back with a toothpick to reveal the sweet flesh laid out in a zig zag pattern.  The accompanying ice cream flavours were a delightful selection of chocolate, hazelnut and coffee, topped with a swirl of whipped cream.

Italian pineapple and ice cream dessert.

Just as we were about to ask for the bill, the waiter returned, this time with a glass for cloudy limoncello for each of us.

Well, that sealed it.  We certainly couldn't reduce our tip this time.  We may have paid a little too much, but for all the freebies and the royal treatment, it was definitely worth it!

Dresden: Once or Twice?

Our hotel in Dresden had warned us that everything would be closed on 3 October, because it was a national holiday.  On the German Unity Day (Tag der deutschen Einheit), the receptionist claimed, none of the supermarkets and practically none of the restaurants will be trading.  We might find some tourist attractions still open, but be prepared!

This was disappointing news indeed, as we had only planned to spend one day in this beautiful city.  Fortunately, it was not as dire as she had made it out to be.  We had no trouble visiting the eye-raisingly amusing Hygiene Museum or the Volkwagen Transparent Factory (where we were the only visitors on the English tour), nor did we have any difficulty finding food to eat.  In fact, there was a Herbstmarkt, or autumn market, in the old market square right next to our hotel.

As you might imagine, there were plenty of stalls selling sausages and beer.  There were also rides for the children, from a mini train to a ferris wheel.  Sweet treats included gingerbread hearts with words of love on them (I was surprised there were also messages in Russian, until I remembered we were in East Germany), French crêpes, and round doughnuts called Quarkkrapfen, which you can have either as is (ungefüllt), or filled with either jam (Marmelade) or eggnog (Eierlikör).

Fried quark ball filled with German eggnog (Quarkkrapfen mit Eierlikör).

We walked around until we found what we deemed to be the stall with the freshest-looking food.  This place offered multiple types of sausages, from currywurst to pferdebockwurst, herbed garlic mushrooms, a homemade Russian soup called soljanka, and a kale stew (pictured below) which we ordered.

Large pans of food cooking: soljanka (left) and kale stew (right).

Lady (ladling kale onto plate): Would you like fried potatoes with that?
Us: Sure.
Lady (adding fried potatoes, then placing a sausage on the kale): Mustard?
Us: Yep, great.
Lady: Once or twice?
Us (confused): Does she mean one or two sausages, or one or two squirts of mustard? Oh, twice, please.

Kale with smokey sausage from the Ore Mountains, fried potatoes and mustard (Grünkohl mit erzgebirgischem Knacker, Bratkatoffeln, Senf).

Wrong answer. We got two sausages and a large amount of mustard anyway, but what that question actually meant was: one plate or two?  There was only so much we could eat of the intensely smokey sausage, the salty kale and the very filling fried potato.  Sadly, we had to throw a plate away, and we didn't even get to try anything else on offer.  But hey, we enjoyed the meal, and we will know what to say next time someone asks us "once or twice?"

Lost in Mistranslation

Recently, a friend posted the following picture up on his Facebook page:

Interesting Taiwanese Milk Tea flavours

It took me a few seconds.  So "Red Bean" is incorrectly spelt as "Red Been", pretty standard stuff... oh wait, WHAT?  "Embryo Flavor"?!?!?!

Upon further research, I discovered that 胚芽奶茶 (pēi yá nǎi​ chá) is probably barley milk tea, though I have also seen "wheat" or "malt" printed on other menus.  胚芽 (pēi yá) translates to "embryo" or "germ" according to one online dictionary, so for instance 小麥胚芽 (xiǎo ​mài​ pēi​ yá) is wheat germ and 胚芽米 (pēi yá mǐ) is semi-polished rice, i.e. rice minus the husk, but including the germ.  It's not as daring as you think to take a sip of this drink!

This confusion reminded me of the menu I saw at a Chinese restaurant on Dominion Road.  We first went to 羊先生 (which we shall translate as "Mr. Yang's") because the English part of the sign displayed "steamboat", and we were looking for a steamboat (a.k.a. hot pot) restaurant in the area.  Well, there was no steamboat in sight.  Instead, we found a menu which looked like this:

Page out of the menu at Mr. Yang's

It might be difficult to see this in the picture, but one dish on offer was "牛肉刀削面 Beef knife bevel" which is actually knife-shaved noodles (sliced into strips), a Shanxi specialty.  In the following documentary (from 1:20), a young man demonstrates the slicing of noodles while balanced on a unicycle, and he manages to flick the pieces of dough from his head into a pot of boiling water too!

Another item you can get at Mr. Yang's is "上汤菜心 On the soup vegetable heart".  You could be easily excused for not knowing that this is choy sum served in broth.

Yet another offering which flummoxed us was "清炒荷兰豆(豆干/蒜茸/腊肉) Fries without additional ingredients the peas (dried beans/garlic deer velvet/cured meat)".  Is this beans or peas?  And could you really get it with deer velvet (surely not for the price of $16)?  For your peace of mind, although New Zealand is a major exporter of deer velvet, 蒜茸 (suàn róng) is actually simply garlic, crushed.  茸 (róng) on its own means something like "soft" or "fluffy", which I suppose is the texture of crushed garlic.  Actual deer velvet used in traditional Chinese medicine would be 鹿茸 (lù​ róng).  What this dish turns out to be is plain fried snowpeas, optionally with dried bean curd (a firm tofu), crushed garlic, or preserved meat.  Phew!

By the way, "回锅肉包子 Recooks the meat dumpling" is a steamed bun filled with twice cooked pork, and "鸡蛋韭菜盒子 Egg fragrant-flowered garlic box" is a savoury pancake pocket filled with egg and garlic chives (pictured in the bottom right of the menu page above).

They actually did pretty well with some of the translations too.  For instance, "鱼香茄子煲 Eggplant with chilil" is often literally given as "fish fragrant eggplant" in other restaurants, and for years I thought there was actually some kind of fish or fish sauce in it.  In fact, there is traditionally no fish at all in this dish.  It is so called because the sauce (made with chilli bean paste, soy sauce, ginger, garlic and Chinese black vinegar) is also frequently used to cook fish in Sichuan cuisine.

Engrish.com has a great collection of dubious menu (and other) translations.  What other oddities have you come across?  Was it just funny, or did you actually think you were eating something completely different?

[Added  15 February 2012:

Come to think of it, English is full of traps for the language learner too.  Sweetbreads are neither sweet nor bread, and black forest cake and black pudding are two very different things.  I hadn't heard of bubble and squeak until recently and had no idea what it was.  You wouldn't want to translate "hot dog" or "toad in the hole" word for word either.  Oh, and don't forget the confusion when someone from outside NZ/Australia is invited to "bring a plate".
]

Review: Faro (화로), Newmarket

The best, and perhaps only, modern Korean BBQ restaurant we knew of was Faro in town, and I'd been meaning to write about it for a while.  We were therefore excited to hear that a new branch opened just over a week ago in Newmarket, where HP8 on Nuffield Street used to be.  Not only that, there were new items on the menu, including sesame leaf rolls!

We headed off immediately to try this new venue out.  It seemed to be less dark than the Faro in town, and tables were partitioned off to give a sense of privacy.  There was also an area to the right that could accommodate larger groups.  Otherwise, it was much the same, with a grill ring in the middle of the table for you to BBQ your food, a button on the side of the table for summoning your waiter (common to Korean restaurants) and a pipe which you can adjust to hang above your grill, for extracting the smoke from your cooking.

Extraction pipes hung above each booth.

Floor seating for a larger group.

After perusing the menu for some time, we decided to go for a selection of entrees, as well as getting some meat and veg for the grill.  We also opted to try a rice dish with radish greens called shiregi (시래기영양밥), and were mildly surprised when the outgoing waitress suggested that it would taste "healthy" and that she wouldn't recommend it.  The vegetarian had had enough of bibimbap (비빔밥) though (mixture of vegetables, optionally with egg and/or meat, on rice, served with a fermented chilli sauce, which seems to be the safest vegetarian option), so we ordered the shiregi rice despite the warning.

Our entrees came first, the stir-fried peanuts labelled kong (땅콩무침) to begin with, then the sesame ssam with rice (깻잎밥).  And here I have to digress...

Sesame ssam: rice and black sesame seeds wrapped with a pickled perilla leaf.

While I was looking up the Korean for this dish, I discovered that kkaenip ssam (깻잎쌈) is actually a wrap with a perilla leaf, not sesame, the common mistranslation.  I confirmed this with a Korean friend:

Perilla is correct. Because both perilla and sesame seeds are used in the Korean cuisine in similar (but distinct) manners, one word, '깨', refers to both.

참깨 ('true' 깨) refers to sesame, usually more expensive, used as garnish or to get sesame oil (참기름, or 'true' oil)

들깨 ('field' or 'wild' 깨) refers to perilla, used for flavouring soups, or making oil (들기름), which is used as marinade or dressing for vegetables. 

Because the word '깻잎' simply means the 'leaf of 깨', not many Korean people would know which one it refers to. But the correct answer is perilla :)

Yay.  So we seem to have eaten a green version of what is growing in my garden.  It was a bit soft and fibrous, quite unlike the crisp and juicy feeling you would expect with a lettuce leaf, though perhaps not so different from a stuffed vine leaf in Greek or Turkish cuisine.

A couple of dishes from the Dinner Special page came out shortly after this (though they still looked like entrees to me): stuffed chillis called gochu jeon (고추전) and chicken on fried tofu, or dubu dak (두부닭).

Dubu dak and gochu jeon.

Then came the food for the grill, along with the usual Korean side dishes.  Each person was given two varieties: the pickled onion and a daikon salad.  We also had four larger bowls to share between the table, which contained kimchi, a green salad, a white jelly made of mung bean starch, and a sliced soy egg.  When we polished them off, they were later replaced by battered courgette slices and a mung bean salad.

Marinated boneless beef rib fillets, fresh cut top blade, marinated chicken with hot hot hot sauce, and side dishes.

I guess the thing about cooking your own dinner is that you've only got yourself to blame if it's burnt or otherwise suboptimal.  When the bars on the grill got black and sticky, a waiter would come rushing up to replace it for you, so vegetarians don't even need to worry about contaminated cookware.  Our marinated meats were good, but we could have done with some salt for the plain one.  Thinking back afterwards, they must have just forgotten to give us the sauces they'd advertised on the cover of their menu, which were supposed to be:

Galbi-Jang: best with marinated beef
Roast Salt: best with fresh beef & pork
Ssam-Jang: best with vegitable wrap

Marinated beef rib fillets on the grill.

You can also grill vegetables, though they were quite dry and tended to burn easily.  The tomato, in particular, wanted to disintegrate and stick to the grill.  Again, these could really have done with some sauce.

Grilling vegetables.

Finally, we received the shiregi rice, which was the $17 bowl of grains that the waitress had tried to dissuade us from. Yes, it did taste healthy, but it was also delicious.  I would have liked it more if it had had more radish greens, and where was the chilli paste mentioned in the menu?  It was also served with a decidedly unvegetarian soup: we found a prawn, some little clams and dried shrimps in the doen jang soup (된장찌개), which had tofu and vegetables in the soybean base as well.

Shiregi rice with doen jang soup and soy sauce.

We were so full after all this that we unfortunately had no room for desserts.  We were happy pandas after a fun and pleasant meal.  Although some of the food was bland, partly due to the missing sauces, this was no doubt due to the fact that the restaurant had opened less than two weeks ago, and we look forward to coming back when these mistakes will have been sorted out.

Panda Recommends

Mains: something off the grill menu ($11 - $13).  This is a Korean BBQ restaurant after all.  Don't forget (as we did) to ask for your sauces.

Vegie Pandas
Unlike the menu from Faro in town, the vegetarian options are not clearly marked here.  There are a number of beautiful entrees which you could order, as well as a plate of vegetables to grill, or go for the default option of vegetarian bibimbap (비빔밥).

Menu - page 1

Menu - page 2

Menu - page 3

Restaurant Details

Faro
49 Nuffield Street, Newmarket
(09) 529 4040

Opening hours:
Mondays to Sundays 11:30am - 3pm, 5:30pm - 10:30pm

The Newmarket branch of Faro is not far from Hansan, where HP8 used to be.

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