Cheese and curry harumaki

Harumaki means spring roll in Japanese. Haru is spring and maki means to roll. Harumaki is the Japanese adaptation of Chinese spring rolls.

Unlike Chinese spring rolls, harumaki filling includes a thick sauce that coats the protein. Pork is the most common although practically any meat can be substituted. When you bite into a harumaki, the sauce which thins down a bit during frying drips into your mouth. It’s a completely different experience from eating Chinese pork spring rolls.

In this recipe, the ground pork filling is cooked with broth, flour, curry, ginger, garlic, oyster sauce, soy sauce and ketchup. Don’t be surprised at the inclusion of ketchup. It figures in so many Japanese dishes that were developed during the Meiji era when Western culture was allowed to influence traditional Japanese cooking.

The cooked filling has to be cooled to room temperature before wrapping. It’s just not a good idea to wrap hot filling with spring roll wrapper. The steam will immediately soak the wrapper and it will never turn properly crisp even with prolonged frying.

Because harumaki filling contains sauce, wrapping it is not the same as making Chinese pork spring rolls. It is a bit messy. It helps if you dust the spring roll wrappers with a little starch before and after filling them. To discrourage the sauce from spreading while wrapping, our trick is to sandwich it between slices of mozzarella.

The spring rolls are deeped fried just like Chinese spring rolls. But because the filling is already cooked and the sauce can leek as it thins out in the heat, it is best to scoop them out of the oil just as soon as they turn golden and crisp.