Easy Rice Paper Rolls

Last weekend I had the pleasure of having lunch with a friend at Nourish Lexington. Their motto, "Responsibly Sourced, Respectfully Priced" made us swoon; and the food wasn't too bad either.

I chose the rice paper rolls filled with asparagus, red onions, and seaweed salad, served with a ginger miso sauce. I had never ordered rice paper rolls (some call them spring or summer rolls) before but was smitten by the combination of savory asparagus and seaweed salad and salty soy sauce.

I just had to recreate these.

Fast forward to this afternoon. I ventured to a bad part of town in Worcester (Main South, for the locals) to Mekong Market, an Asian grocery. I definitely felt out of my element, but was opened to this whole new world of strange-looking fruits and vegetables (I saw the bewitched bitter melon), an entire aisle of cellophane-wrapped rice noodles, and lots of packaging I could not read. There were so many new things to see and try, but I stuck to my list and bought rice wrappers, rice noodles, sesame oil, dried seaweed, ginger, cilantro, and some canned lychee (a last minute addition.)

As soon as I arrived home and flew through the door, I began assembling bowls of a variety of vegetable matter: sliced avocado, spinach, sliced carrots, chopped cilantro, green beans, and some tofu for frying.

In a matter of minutes, we had a complete rice paper roll bar set up and were ready to rock and roll.

For those of you unfamiliar with rice paper, it comes in a cellophane package and each 8" rice paper looks like a giant Valentine doily. They are dry as a bone, and for a moment, we weren't actually sure if they were edible.

Thirty seconds in a bowl with warm water and these wrappers were soft and pliable and ready for some filling.

Roll it up until it looks like a fat cigar. Tim took it literally.

Included in this little roll was some whole grain vermicelli (made from brown rice). The key to this is not to boil it, but rather boil your water, put the rice noodles in, turn the heat off, and let the noodles sit for 3-4 minutes while the water cools.

And some seaweed. It may sound strange, but this particular kind of seaweed (and yes, there are many types of edible seaweed) has a great texture, similar to linguine. It's not slimy or the type that creeps around your feet and legs in the ocean during a summer on the Cape. That has to be one of my biggest pet peeves, but I digress.

This seaweed comes dry in the package, and needs to be soaked in a bowl of warm water for about 10 minutes to come back to life. Well, not really "life" per se, but to be edible. I think it is called arame, but it seemed almost too thick to be arame. If someone else has a clue, let me know. As you can see, the packaging was no help to me.

With a few pieces of pan-fried tofu, these rice paper rolls made for a delicious and quick dinner.

Rice Paper Rolls

For two

8 rice paper rolls (4 per person seems about right)

1 cup baby spinach

2 carrots, cut into matchsticks (we used a mandoline on ours)

1 avocado, cut into slices

1 cup whole grain vermicelli rice noodles

1 cup seaweed (arame, I think...)

1 cup green beans

1 bunch of cilantro, finely chopped

Place one rice paper wrapper in a bowl of warm water for about 30 seconds, or until it is soft and pliable and when you remove from the water, looks like a wet paper towel (Tim's analogy, not mine.)

Place on a plate, and pile about 1/4 cup of filling (a couple leaves of spinach, some carrots, a Tbsp of cilantro, 2-3 Tbsp of a mix of vermicelli and seaweed, 1 slice of avocado) horizontally across the bottom third of the wrapper. Wrap the bottom 1/3 up and around the filling. Fold the left and right sides over the filling, and roll the bottom 1/3 now filled with your vegetables up to the top 2/3 to wrap up completely. The wrapper should be sticky enough that it stays securely in place.

Note: The variations of filling are really endless. I saw recipes with shrimp, Tim put chicken in his, and at Nourish they use asparagus. Get creative!

And then came the sauce.

And I was desperate to recreate the dipping sauce that Nourish provided with the rolls, so I created a ginger soy sauce based loosely on an allrecipes.com online recipe. It is pretty amazing, and it can be used as a dipping sauce or as a marinade. I also used mine to drizzle over the tofu I pan-fried to give it a crispy, salty-sweet texture.

Soy Ginger Sauce

(adapted from allrecipes.com)

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp ginger, minced

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/4 cup sesame oil

1/2 cup soy sauce

3 Tbsp honey

1/4 cup water

1 Tbsp sesame seeds

Mix all of the ingredients in a lidded jar and shake until all of the liquids are well-mixed.

Question of the Day: Do you shop at any ethnic markets? Have you tried rice paper wrappers before? What did you think?