Fresh Raw Corn Milk

Whilst wandering around the streets of Hanoi over the weekend we stumbled across a fresh corn milk stand. This piqued my interest as I have been looking into making a variety of dairy free milks but I had never thought of using corn to make milk. In hindsight, corn seems the most obvious grain to use, it even oozes a milky liquid when you cut it, but I am not sure I would ever have made the leap unless I had seen this stall. I made this milk using raw kernels as I figured it would have more vitamins that way but I am sure you can used cooked corn although the taste will be slightly different. I am planning to try with cooked corn just to see which flavor I prefer. I added a little brown sugar and a dash of cinnamon and ginger to my milk and it made for a quite refreshing drink.

Vietnamese Style Rice Paper Rolls

At the end of March we headed up to Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand for an activity packed weekend away. One of the great things we did was a thai cooking class. I will try to reproduce some of the dishes in the near future but this recipe is not one of them. Why then, you are wondering, don't I get to the point of how this relates to this recipe. Well we made spring rolls which were delicious and very easy to make but they are something I had never got around to making as I thought they would be really fiddly - but great news is they aren't and they taste great. So although my spring rolls were rather deformed I thought I would try another recipe that requires careful wrapping - the spring rolls' healthy sibling - the rice paper roll. It is stuff full of crisp cool veggies, low in fat and requires little cooking which is perfect for those days when you really don't want to stand in front of the stove.

Now that the stickier humid weather is back with us in Singapore (not that is ever very cool here) I think I will be making these little lovelies quite a bit using what ever veggies and fresh herbs I have to hand. I made half of these rolls with prawns for my OH, JC, and replaced them with oyster mushrooms for me. I think you could put whatever you like in these from mango to chicken or avocado to tofu just remember to use lots of nice fresh herbs and a tasty dipping sauce.I served mine with two dipping sauces but you could just serve with good quality shop bought sweet chilli sauce if you prefered. The hoisin & peanut dipping sauce is not gluten free as most hoisin sauces contain small amounts of wheat. I have therefore included a sweet & sour dipping sauce which is gluten free which is nice but there are no photos of it.