Home Cook: Fresh Spring Rolls for a No-Cook August Meal

Homemade Spring Rolls.jpg Many of the new recipes that we try out in our own kitchen come solely from favorites that we have found in restaurants around town. We get to a point where we just can't stand to wait any longer, even if it is only a week away from our next visit. We get cranky. And worst of all, our boyfriend gets even crankier from having to eat at the same place too many times in a row.

So instead, when we feel ourselves starting to obsess over particular meals or tastes, we learn to make them at home so that we can have them any time we want--without having to drive across town, and without having to drag someone else in tow who would rather be at home watching the baseball game.

For the past couple of years, the International District's Green Leaf Vietnamese restaurant has been a known staple in our life. We typically can't go longer than a month without a visit, and we're certain that every single one of our close friends has been there at least once due to our prodding; including our friends that live out of town.

Many Seattleites swear by Tamarind Tree and we agree, the Tamarind Tree is good. But this Seattlest is a Green Leaf girl, through and through. We like having a menu with only two pages rather than the tome given out at the Tamarind Tree. We like not having to wait an hour for a table. We love the intimate atmosphere, the friendly staff, the quick service--and most of all, we can't get enough of the Green Leaf's spring rolls and traditional Vietnamese dishes that can easily leave us smiling on the inside for the rest of the week.

Last summer we finally decided that it was time to learn how to make our own spring rolls. We were sick of eating the same salads every day and barbecuing all of our meals to save our small apartment from the additional heat. We needed something new.

Spring rolls, also known as summer or fresh rolls, are both easy and difficult to make. They're easy in thought--the idea of taking a bunch of your favorite veggies, meats, and herbs and rolling them up like a salad burrito--yet can prove to be difficult in practice.

Chopping up each individual ingredient is time-consuming and feels tedious when you're only adding small bits to each roll. Mastering the actual wrapping of the rice paper can sincerely make you want to break every dish in your cabinet... We've been there. Once damp and pliable, the rice paper discs become fragile and rip as easily as a cobweb.

We promise, however, that you will get better. Your stress level or need to pull your hair out will lessen with each wrapping. And if you already happen to be a master at wrapping burritos, more power to you.

But now that we've mentioned the bad, we can also mention the good, which is the fact that you can put all of your favorite ingredients into spring rolls and tailor them to fit your cravings on any given day. You can also streamline prep time in a few different ways. If you want shrimp or pork rolls, we'd recommend buying precooked, deveined prawns to simply slice down the middle, or the Chinese barbecued pork found in grocery stores to cut into thin pieces for a quick and easy addition.

If you're making a small batch of rolls or if you're short on time, hit up the salad bar for pre-cut ingredients, such as grated carrots, mushrooms and cucumbers. If you're making a larger batch of rolls and need more vegetables, this approach can get expensive.

As for dipping sauces, be wary of those that you can buy at the store and always make your own if it is possible. A few peanut sauces purchased when we were pinched for time offered up some unexpected--and unenjoyable--flavors.

For the rice paper, rice noodles, and dipping sauce (if you go store bought), we recommend making the trip to Uwajimaya, where you can easily find everything you need. As an added bonus, the produce section offers bean sprouts in bulk, rather than in a shipped bag that came from god knows where.

Spring Roll Ingredients:

Though we know that there are SO many ingredient possibilities for spring rolls, as an example we're going to include everything that we used last weekend while making them for a dinner party.