Spring Rolls for Venzas and Vietnam

 

Ah the Spring roll… the egg roll’s healthier Vietnamese cousin, also known as “Summer rolls” when unfried.  We can’t resist these as an appetizer, but sometimes they can be pretty bland.  Luckily there’s always peanut sauce to the rescue!  We watched an ACTUAL cooking show on the Food Network (yes, they still have those… mostly in the mornings) and we thought that this recipe looked super simple!

Part of the fun of making a recipe like this (and generally the fun of making this blog) is that we get to go find scary specialty ingredients.  For this recipe, we went to Central Market to get:

Spring Roll Skin.  That doesn’t sound unappetizing at all.  There are a million of these guys in one container (which is good, cause we’ll be making them again).

These are essentially “rice paper,” and I have no idea how they’re made or why they have this handsome pattern all across them.

We also got vermicelli noodles.  These are easy enough to find in the grocery store.  You just soak them in hot water for 10 minutes and then drain.  Super easy.

Now, we decided to make shrimp spring rolls.  Luckily this recipe effectively layers flavor into every step, because we were not in the mood for boring, bland shrimp!  We don’t really have any pictures of this, but we poached the shrimp in water, wine, lime juice, and bay.   We also tossed in some leftover lemongrass. 

THEN we cooked the vermicelli noodles in the shrimp broth.

THEN we used that broth to soak the rice paper.  So every cooked ingredient in the spring roll has had a chance to absorb good shrimp flavor. 

The other key to great tasting spring rolls is fresh produce and herbs.

We used cucumber, shredded carrot, jalapeno, bell pepper, cilantro, and mint.  Onto the assembly!

Apologies for the blurry photo, but this part is important.  The rice paper doesn’t need much soaking. Hold it like a steering wheel, with the bottom part in the broth, and spin it until its just moistened. 

 

Just two little shrimp go into each roll.  Then we added crispy veggies that had been soaked in rice wine vinegar and soy sauce.

 

Then some mint, cilantro, and the vermicelli.

And then you have the carefully wrap it up like a little burrito.  The paper is pretty sticky, so once you start rolling it just sticks to itself.  After you do a couple of these, you get the hang of it!

The peanut sauce was easy enough to make…  Yup.  Pretty Darn easy.   

 

What, you were expecting more?  Sheesh.

 

Now you can impress all your friends with this easy appetizer that looks super complicated!  Ok, it was a little complicated, but it was fun and quite tasty!