Fresh Spring Rolls

Let me start off first by saying: This is not a "I am short on time and need to make a quick dinner" type of meal. Depending on how well stocked your pantry is, this could potentially be an all day affair to make sure that you have all the ingredients for each dish, the prep work, and the actual cooking process. I obviously find this process worthwhile and delicious, but be prepared to work for your meal!

Fresh Spring Rolls:

These are the soft translucent ones, sorry if you were hoping for fried!

(Makes approximately 25 rolls)

:: 1 bunch each of mint, cilantro, thai basil
:: 1 1/2 cucumber (or 2-3 small cucumbers), peeled, cut into skinny matchsticks
:: shrimp sliced in half butterfly style (I use 1 1/2 shrimp per roll, you can omit, add more in, whatever. These do NOT need to be nice large ones, 36-45+ (meaning 36-45 shrimp per pound) work just fine
:: round tapioca sheets (for this and the rice stick noodles, I can't explain how to choose from among the billions of options. Your best bet is to ask whoever the store owner is and hopefully they will be able to point you in the right direction. I've had more luck in mom and pop grocers than the big chains, but good luck!)
:: 1 package rice stick noodles

Sauce:

:: hoisin sauce
:: peanut butter (creamy or crunchy is fine!)
:: chopped peanuts (optional)
:: rice wine vinegar

Rinse the herbs, feel free to leave them on stems as you will be picking off pieces individually for each roll anyway.

Boil the shrimp. Shrimp barely need any time to cook at all - once the water comes to a rolling boil after you dump the shrimp in they should be finished. Rinse thoroughly in cold water. At this point, you can cut the shrimp in half along the 'c' curve of the shrimp to make them flatter and easier to wrap. Drain, set aside.

Boil the rice stick noodles. They need to be 'al dente' when you're finished. Immediately rinse them thoroughly with cold water - after the rinsing they shouldn't be warm at all! Drain, set aside.

Make your assembly line! This is important to us lazy cooks so that you can sit down and wrap from beginning to end without moving around a lot.

If you notice the wide and shallow blue pan on the bottom right of the image, it is filled with WARM water. Don't make it hot enough to scald your fingers, but it should feel closer to bathwater than to the tap. This is what you will use to dip the tapioca sheets in to make them pliable enough to roll.

Take the tapioca sheets one at a time (don't try to dip them all and set aside; they will form a sticky mess that you will not be able to separate). It needs a very quick dip, only long enough to ensure that all edges have been saturated. It will still feel rigid but will soften up by the time you get to rolling. 5 seconds maximum, trust me!

Assemble! For reference, the bottom of the picture is towards me as I'm rolling. There is a thin layer of rice stick noodles over which I have put a few strips of cucumber, 2-3 thai basil leaves, 2 sprigs of cilantro, and 3-4 mint leaves. The shrimp are offset and slightly above the rest so that when you roll it up, hopefully the shrimp will show up on the surface to make your presentation pretty.

Fold the bottom edge over the herbs.

Fold in the edges.

This part is important and will determine how "loose" your spring roll is, or how tightly it's bound when you bite into it. Roll up from bottom to top and make sure that everything is tucked in nicely. This will take a few trials to get used to, but since the ugly trial ones can be used to...erm...taste test, no one usually minds. Voila!

The sauce. Ohh, the sauce. I think this is a pretty simple, poor man's version of a good peanut sauce. It has its faults because it can oftentimes be too thick, too sweet, and too salty due to the nature of its few ingredients. I have often wondered the best way to cut some of the textural and overseasoned sauciness of it, but so far all I have come up with is to add a few drops of rice wine vinegar. The acidity seems to help a lot. Thoughts? Tahini paste? Water?!

THAT BEING SAID....I think perhaps I am too picky, though, because no one else in my family seems to mind eating it and usually I end up making twice as much as I intend to even though I think it's not possible to eat all of the sauce....and then by the end of the meal it's gone. My grandma started slathering it all over her pad thai, so if that's any indication.

And at the end of the day, it's a flippin' 3-4 ingredient sauce. How much simpler do you get?


Please don't get upset with me for not including measurements here. Asian cooking and measuring spoons have never mixed for me. I just do it by taste; if I had to guess, it's 2 parts hoisin to 1 part peanut butter. Stir it all up nicely and you should get a thick, creamy sauce! Here is where you add some vinegar to loosen up, if desired.

Bon Appetit!

*EDIT*

If you want to make these ahead of time, it's fine to wrap them the day or morning of when you intend to serve them. I feel pretty safe letting the rolls sit in room temperature for 6-8 hours or so, but perhaps my attitude towards possible food poisoning is a little too casual for your taste. Just cover them with a damp paper towel or cloth, otherwise they will dry out.

DON'T make them the day ahead. Once refrigerated, the tapioca sheets become really irreversibly hard and unpleasant - they don't really soften up once coming up to room temperature, either.

If you prefer something lighter, another yummy dipping sauce alternative is sweet chili sauce. I like the Mae Ploy brand, but probably only because I've never used any of the others! (amazon.com lists it as $8..... I'm pretty sure it's usually $2-3 at most markets.) It is very mildly spicy, sweet, and tangy - like a much better version of duck sauce you eat with chinese egg rolls.