Vietnamese veg Summer Rolls

The 2020 lockdown!! What can I say, that has not been said already. For me it brought out some interesting cravings. Food items that I didn’t think I love so much but I actually did. Vietnamese summer roll was one of them.. n I just decided I have got to make it at home. And boy! Were they a delight. Simple , fresh, healthy and supadupa tasty. And the peanut dipping sauce is so easy and delish.

Rice paper is a key ingredient in this which people think is not readily available in India but it is actually very easy to find.. especially on online ordering apps. I use Real Thai rice paper which I ordered from Amazon. You also get it at Nature’s Basket and other big supermarkets and sometimes also on Big basket.

 I’ll jump right into ingredients and how to quickly roll these. For 10 rolls -sufficient for 2 people’s dinner

What do you need? 

For the roll

1. Rice papers - 10
2. Room temperature water to moisten the rice paper
3. Clean Kitchen towel 
4. Carrot grated - 2
5. Cucumber julienned - 1(English cucumber works better than Indian cucumber)
6. Bell pepper - long and thin sliced 1
7. Mushrooms 200gm Cut into slices ( you need one meaty vegetable that will give sufficient body to the rolls, can be replaced with paneer or eggplant or zucchini)
8. Garlic minced - 6 cloves
9. Onion Chopped -1 medium 
10. Salt and pepper
11. White vermicelli- 1/2 cup
12. Vinegar 

For peanut dipping sauce 

1. Peanut butter - 4 tea spoon 
2. Soy sauce - 1 teaspoon 
3. Chilli garlic sauce ( if you don’t have chilli garlic sauce, use any red chilli sauce and some finely  chopped garlic) - 2 tea spoon 
4. Honey - 1 teaspoon 
5. Salt
6. Pepper
7. 1/4th cup hot water 

How to make these rolls?

1. Keep all raw veggies separate ready to assemble 
2. In the boiled vermicelli add some salt and Few drops of vinegar
3. In a pan add Oil, onions and garlic and sauté for 3-4 minutes. Add mushroom slices and cook till water drains. add salt and pepper to taste.
4. In a big dish(big enough for the rice papers) put the room temperature water to soak the rice papers. 
5. Dip the rice paper sheet in water for about 10 seconds, remove it and dry it on a kitchen towel
6.  Now on a clean plate, lay your rice paper. In the middle part of the rice paper, put vermicelli, the raw veggies and mushroom. Leave some area just inside the edge of the paper empty to be able to roll and stick the rice paper.
7. After laying down all the veggies, pull one side and bring it on top of the vegetables, now close this with the opposite side of rice paper. (The rice papers will stick because of the glueten in them) 
8. Now this will be like a tube . Now close the open ends again by wrapping it by pulling the ends and sticking them on top of each other. You can leave one side open also as I did in the above photo.

Note: Zucchini and eggplant can be prepared the same way as mushroom.if you want to use paneer You can toss it in oil with some of the dipping sauce so the paneer gets coated with flavour.

How to make the dipping sauce ? 

1. Add all the peanut dipping sauce ingredients and add the hot water eat the end and mix it.
2. I made one dipping sauce for my mom without chilli sauce as she doesn’t eat spicy food. It was pretty nice even though non spicy.

Word of Advise: it seems like rolling  is a lot of work, but once you make the first 2 it gets very easy. I suggest you roll all the rolls and keep it in the fridge for 10 mins and then pounce at one go.

BEST ENJOYED WITH SOME LIGHT BEER! 😁