Lamb Lim Lim ☆

Larry Lim, a JPL colleague, sometime back in the early 1970s, gave me some tomatoes from his garden. Concurrently, one of Camilla’s pupils gave her some avocados from a tree in her yard. Dinner that night paired those ingredients with some leg-of-lamb that I had on hand to make spring rolls that were outstanding! As near as I can remember and reconstruct from my earlier notes, the recipe was very similar to the one below.

  • 4 oz leg of lamb pieces
  • 1 oz lower sodium soy sauce
  • 1 tbsp Chinese rice wine
  • 2 (22 cm square) rice spring roll wrappers
  • 1 large garden tomato, seeded and diced
  • 6 fresh butter lettuce leaves
  • 1 avocado
  • 1 tablespoon unflavored yoghurt
  • Taubasco†, or other hot sauce, to taste
  • juice of 1 lemon

Pan fry the lamb pieces until brown, but not overcooked. Add the soy sauce and rice wine and simmer for a minute or so.

Seed the tomato and dice it into ½” pieces.

Carefully wash and dry the lettuce leaves and lay them flat on a plate.

Remove the seed and covering of the avocado and dice it roughly. Put the avocado in a mixing bowl, add the yoghurt, hot sauce, and lemon, and mash into a nice paste-like consistency.

Soak one of the spring roll wrappers in warm water until it softens. Carefully remove it from the water, allow the excess water to drain, and lay it out on flat surface. Do the same with the other wrapper.

Arrange the lettuce leaves in a row along center of each wrapper. Spoon on the avocado mixture, add the tomato pieces, and top with the lamb. Try to leave about an inch at both ends.

Fold the top and bottom into the spring roll and roll it up lengthwise. Brush all sides of each with vegetable oil and put both into a small greased baking pan.

Heat a toaster oven to 435°F, insert the spring rolls, bake until the top browns, about 15 minutes. Turn the rolls and bake until the entire roll is brown, about another 10 minutes. Remove from the oven, slice each diagonally at the middle, and serve immediately.

Serves 2.