Vegan Summer Rolls
A recipe by Johanna Langner, Germany
About Johanna
Johanna is a nutritionist and yoga teacher based in Aachen, Germany. She teaches yoga classes, workshops and gives private trainings. She offers holistic and ayurvedic nutrition coaching, guidance in detox programs and collects and shares her cooking highlights and recipes at www.livesimplicity.de. She is passionate about combining her two professions and inspires and supports others to cultivate a more conscious, sustainable and healthy lifestyle — internally and externally.
What inspires you to eat less meat?
Raised in a family of vegetarians, cutting out meat was never really a challenge for me. However, being born into a specific environment is one thing, but it’s another matter to start thinking critically yourself and also question the habits and beliefs of the people surrounding you. The more I learned about food and its industry, the more detailed and substantial my perspective grew. The decision to keep being a vegetarian was strengthened throughout my studies in biology, nutrition and health and experiences I made working with practitioners in India and Indonesia. It keeps surprising me that so many people consider a life without animal products as complicated and boring. Proving the opposite is part of my personal ambition.
About this recipe
The vegetables incorporated in this recipe can easily be replaced according to your own taste. I wanted to focus on seasonal foods and give it a more grounding character using roots and healthy oils. A fresher summer version could be using fresh mint and a lemon-tahini dressing. For the current season, I wanted to give the meal a spicy twist and created a peanut sauce, which I combine with pretty much everything in my kitchen at the moment. Avocado toasts, tofu dishes, dips for oven veggies… it even tastes amazing as a pasta sauce.
Ingredients
For about 12 rolls:
1 medium size cabbage
1/2 avocado
1 carrot
1 beetroot
1/2 red capsicum
5 cm cucumber
1 spring onion
black and white sesame seeds
For the creamy peanut sauce:
12 tbsp peanut butter (make sure it’s a high quality product, no added sugars or fats)
1 yellow chili
2 garlic cloves
3 tbsp soy sauce
Water
Method
- Remove the outer leaves and the wooden end of the cabbage, wash it and put it into a cooking pot.
- Add water until the cabbage is fully covered and cook for 30 minutes.
- Wash and finely slice carrot, beetroot, cucumber, capsicum and spring onion.
- Halve the avocado and cut little rectangles in one half of the avocado using a sharp knife.
- Place peanut butter, peeled garlic, washed chili, soy sauce and 2 tbsp of water into the food processor and blend until you obtain a homogenous paste. Add as much water as needed for your preferred consistency.
- Take the cabbage out of the cooking pot and rinse under cold water to cool it down and protect your hands from burning.
- Carefully, remove the leaves of the cabbage one at a time until you reach the very middle, where the leaves are very small and quite hard.
Remove the hard areas from the leaves so you’re left with soft and flexible leaves, just as the leaves of iceberg lettuce. - Fill the cabbage leaves with the veggies, avocado, peanut sauce and sesame seeds and roll them into small parcels.
Enjoy these vegan rainbow rolls warm or cold, as a starter, main or snack in between.
For more about Johanna, follow and connect with her on:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/___livesimplicity___/
Website: http://livesimplicity.de
