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This is what they call light rice pancakes with fresh, varied fillings in Vietnam and South China. Fish and seafood, greens, vegetables and even fruits can be the ingredients of this delicate… or crunchy dish.
Spring rolls can be found today in trendy restaurants, on the home table, and in street stalls selling oriental food. The situation is approximately the same in Southeast Asia – in the homeland of stuffed rice pancakes: there, depending on the filling, this dish can serve as a quick snack or an element of a formal dinner.
Rolls are eaten cold or deep-fried, they are good just like that, and with the addition of a small amount of sauce. And you can wrap almost anything in them; the only indispensable ingredient is the very thin rice flour cake itself, which serves as the basis for the future roll.
Delicate frame
When dry, rice pancake (rice paper) looks like a fragile, thin plate of a round, square or triangular shape. Today, this product can be bought in large supermarkets or health food stores. Rice paper should be handled very carefully, otherwise it will begin to crumble and break off at the edges.
There are several ways to turn this stiff sheet into a thin, flexible, frosted clear pancake. The easiest is to immerse it in warm water for a couple of seconds, remove it and, holding it vertically with two fingers, let the water drain, and then put it on a dry kitchen towel. In a minute, the pancake will acquire the necessary texture, and it will be possible to wrap the filling in it. If you come across too thin rice paper that is difficult to hold vertically, you can do it even easier: put a dry sheet on a cloth and lightly moisten it with warm water with a cooking brush. It is better to prepare one leaf at a time: it dries very quickly and loses elasticity.
After that, you can start rolling the rolls: put the filling on the bottom quarter of the sheet, wrap the pancake once, carefully fold the side edges, and then roll it like a regular roll. If you do not immediately serve the rolls to the table, they must be tightly packed in foil or film and put in the refrigerator.
Crispy rolls with salmon and asparagus
For 4 persons. Cooking time: 20 minutes.
- 8 sheets of rice paper (20 cm in diameter)
- 300 g lightly salted salmon
- 250 g small asparagus sprouts
- 8 leaves green shiso (a plant related to nettle that tastes like green basil)
- 80 g rice noodles
- salt
Soak the rice noodles in very hot water for 3 minutes, then rinse with cold water, pat dry and refrigerate. Cut the asparagus into 12 cm pieces and cook for 2 minutes in salted boiling water. Cut the fish into slices 12 cm long and 1,5 cm wide. Prepare (soften) rice paper and roll 8 rolls 12 cm long. Sprinkle them with finely chopped shiso and serve with sauce of your choice.
Read more:
- Menu «made in Vietnam»
Form and content
Roll stuffing is traditionally made from a mixture of raw and cooked ingredients. Lettuce, mint, cilantro, fried shrimp halves, boiled chicken, fried pork slices, rice noodles, soy sprouts, roasted and coarsely chopped peanuts, boiled rice, thinly sliced shallots, tofu – all this and much more can be a filling for spring rolls. By experimenting with different combinations of flavors, we will get many original versions of this dish, and the thick and aromatic huasin sauce, which is supposed to flavor the filling, will give our rolls an expressive and bright oriental hue. If we add exotic or European fruits to the traditional ingredients – papaya, kumquat, mango, grapefruit, apple or pear – we can create a completely new, unique taste in fusion style.
Cold and hot
Classic spring rolls are served as a cold appetizer: refined and fresh, they seem to be specially created to arouse the appetite. However, in Vietnam, it is customary to heat-treat spring rolls – in this form they can serve as a hot appetizer or main course. Nems (this is how the Vietnamese call rolls deep-fried until golden crispy) are usually made somewhat smaller – from half, or even a quarter of a sheet of rice paper. And they twist them more tightly – so that during cooking the filling does not fall out.
Spring rolls with shrimp and avocado
For 4 persons. Cooking time: 15 minutes.
- 8 sheets of rice paper (16 cm in diameter)
- 200 g peeled boiled shrimp
- 1 avocado
- 16 cilantro leaves
- 1 Art. l. lemon juice
Peel the avocado, cut it into thin strips, pour over the lemon juice and mix gently. Place all filling ingredients in the bottom quarter of the prepared rice pancake and roll into a 10 cm long roll. Prepare 7 more rolls in the same way. Serve with sauce of your choice.
Ready-made nems are eaten with hands, wrapped in a lettuce leaf (so as not to get burned), or with chopsticks, dipped in a special sauce. The most popular are hot and sweet sauces (see box on the right): the first is based on the traditional Vietnamese seasoning “nuoc mam” (it is made from small sea fish fermented in the sun), the second is based on huasin sauce (fermented soybeans, mashed with sugar, garlic, rice vinegar and sesame oil). Hot sauce gives the rolls a pleasant and salty marine flavor, sweet sauce brings out the natural taste of the ingredients brighter.
Mix all the ingredients (the sugar should completely dissolve), then pour the sauce into a bottle or jar and refrigerate. Serve in cups garnished with chopped cilantro leaves.
sweet sauce
- 200 ml huasin sauce
- 1 st. l. water
- 1 tsp rice vinegar
- 1 tsp nuok mam sauce (it can be replaced with nam pla Thai fish sauce)
- 1 tsp liquid honey
- 2 tsp white sesame seeds
Combine huasin sauce, water, vinegar, nuok mam sauce and honey. Pour the mixture into a jar and refrigerate. Serve the sauce in cups sprinkled with white sesame seeds.
Spicy sauce
- 6 art. l. nuok mam sauce
- 4 tbsp. l. lime juice
- 2 tbsp. l. rice vinegar
- 2 tsp light cane sugar
- 1 minced cayenne pepper clove
- juice of 1 garlic clove