Sous vide cooked veal tongue, baby carrots, asparagus tips, microgreens, tomato water.

Springs rolls are a traditional food in spring time in my part of China. Outside of school in college, this restaurant serves it all all year round and it was popular until it was bulldozed in the city’ frenzy to “modernize” and “improve”. Spring rolls back home in northern China are very different from the cantonese crap they serve in most Chinese restaurants the US which do not deserve the word “spring” in the name because nothing in the  tastes particularly fresh to me (reason that I don’t order them anymore). The thai/vietnamese style spring rolls do use fresh vegetables, but I am don’t care for the use of fish sauce in this case. The real spring rolls use paper thin steamed dough wrappers, and you wrap fresh vegetables or quickly stir-fried vegetables in them.

Veal tongue sous vide: tongue, bay leaf, salt and pepper. 70C X 72hrs.  The texture of is super tender after the sous vide cooking. I personally like a bit chewiness, so 24 to 48hrs might be a better timing next time.

Originally planned to roll thin slices of tongue onto itself, but this failed due to the overly tender result; so rolling strips of tongue into paper thin shaved radishes was the quick fix. To shave the radishes this thin, I used a truffle shaver. The radish slices needed to be blanched for a few seconds, otherwise too brittle.

For the sauce, a tomato coulis was originally planned. The tomatoes were blanched, chilled, peeled, seeded, salted, but unfortunately, it incorporated too much air bubbles in the Vitamix. The tomato water was used instead.

For the vegetables: baby carrots were braised with butter, vanilla, orange zest, and brown sugar. Baby greens were lightly dressed with lemon juice and olive oil. Asparagus tips were blanched for 2min.

Photo before adding tomato water:

Photos after adding tomato water: