Same same, but dif­fer­ent. This is an expres­sion that every­one knows in Thai­land, and one that is heard around Asia in gen­eral. It’s some­thing that is silkscreened on many a t-shirt seen on the streets and the sub­ways. It also per­fectly epit­o­mizes how I feel about the egg roll.

In the Chi­nese lan­guage, the appe­tizer that Amer­i­cans know as the fried egg roll is actu­ally called a “spring roll”, stuffed with a light veg­e­tar­ian fill­ing com­prised of ver­mi­celli, shi­itake mush­rooms, car­rots, Chi­nese cel­ery, and green onions, then lightly fried and served pip­ing hot. Rarely does the roll take the form of those large, fried, cold, meaty and chewy chimichanga-like food­stuffs I remem­ber from my junior high school cafeteria.

I’m Chinese-American, and I can’t recall any instances when my fam­ily sat down and ate egg rolls as part of our meal (apart from my unfor­tu­nate and unplanned run-ins with the school lunch lady), regard­less of whether we were din­ing out or sit­ting around our own din­ing room table. I won­der, since when did egg rolls, along with the likes of one com­pletely fab­ri­cated dish named Gen­eral Tso’s chicken, rep­re­sent Chi­nese cui­sine, both in the minds and tastes of Amer­ica? Hav­ing seen the delin­eation of var­i­ous regional foods and fla­vors pos­si­ble in the Chi­nese cui­sine, I bow my head in dis­grace for the unfor­tu­nate mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion that hap­pened some­where across the Pacific.

Wait a minute though, I sup­pose we did have egg rolls grow­ing up– or at least, a dish that when trans­lated is lit­er­ally “egg”+“roll”.

Mom would make these on spe­cial occa­sions, usu­ally for din­ner par­ties, but every once in a Blue Moon on those few occa­sions when there was noth­ing going on over the week­ends– no soc­cer games/piano recitals/basketball practice/OM meetings/birthday parties/speed read­ing classes/sculpture/oboe lessons/tutoring sessions/drawing classes sched­uled (Tiger Mom ain’t got nothin’ on my mother).

Her egg roll was just that, a thin crêpe-like layer of egg grid­dled into a pan­cake, then rolled up with a fra­grantly sea­soned ground pork stuff­ing inside. Cut thinly into bite sized pieces, on our table the egg roll would be arranged among a heap of sim­mered napa cab­bage and ver­mi­celli noodles.

Pork is the meat of choice in China — although nowa­days the country’s inter­est in beef (not to men­tion dairy) is quickly gain­ing ground. Year-round avail­abil­ity of scal­lions, fresh mush­rooms, and gin­ger gives the cui­sine– and this dish in par­tic­u­lar– its sig­na­ture fla­vors. The chop­sticks as lone uten­sil gives rea­son for the delib­er­ate slic­ing into bite-sized pieces, and the labo­ri­ous prep coun­tered by a quick sauté/steam in a wok is exem­plary through­out all Chi­nese dishes.

This is an egg roll that is much more rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Chi­nese cook­ery than any egg roll you’ve encoun­tered in the past. It is a dis­tant cousin to its Amer­i­can coun­ter­part– but really, the rela­tion is so dis­tant they’re prac­ti­cally not related. They just some­how hap­pen to share the same name.

For the orig­i­nal post­ing of the arti­cle and a full recipe, head over to Hon­est Cook­ing, where I am one of their newest contributors!