Dulcet Devotion

These are a long forgotten fave from my time spent in Brisbane. Me and the girls from work would sneak out to the local Vietnamese restaurant for “make your own” spring roll plates. It took us a few visits to realize hey–we should recreate these ourselves!

After much organization and planning (luckily our office had a fairly decent kitchen set up) we each brought one ingredient in and over the lunch hour prepped and served a beautiful platter of bright veggies, crisp watery sprouts, glassy rice noodles and steeped a piping hot bowl of water for softening the rice paper wrappers.

We even added fresh mint and coriander from someone’s garden, and hot chillies. And we could never forget the sweet chilli sauce…without it, game over.

The great thing about these cold rolls is that pretty much anything goes. We used to recreate them much in the same way as the restaurant where we first tried them, but over time new ingredients would make an appearance, depending on availability. And when you switch up the odd thing here and there, it changes the taste, keeping things fresh and interesting.

I also really love these because they are such a fun way to eat your vegetables. Sure, we often added shrimp and fried spring rolls, but the majority of these rolls are made up of veggies. Bright, beautiful, clean veggies. A nice change when you’ve been eating heavier, greasier foods all week.

You know what else I like about these? They make their own food party. With each person involved in prepping the ingredients, and then with everyone huddled around the table to prepare their own custom rolls, you get to bump elbows and joke and learn a lot about your friends and dining mates.

In what order do they load up their rice paper? Noodles first? Sprouts? What do they add extra of each time? Double cucumber? 86 the mint? Do they add sweet chilli sauce or soy sauce? Both?

And how do they react when their rice paper gets knotted up in the hot water, or tears because they’ve tried to cram too much goodness into it? The options are endless and so is the conversation.

Finally, you get to enjoy everyone’s happy face when they get the overflowing cold roll into their mouth. For me, that’s what food is all about–getting together, sharing it, and enjoying it.

What’s your favourite sharing food? Fondue? Tacos? Something else?

Spring Rolls/Cold Rolls

There isn’t really a recipe here. Just cut up your favourite veggies–here I’ve used

carrot
cucumber
green onion
red pepper
sprouts
mint

I also prepare rice noodles by adding boiling water to a pot and adding the noodles. Cover and let sit for approximately 3-5 minutes or according to package instructions.

As for the shrimp, there is a bit of a recipe.

Chilli Lime Shrimp

Prepare shrimp-peel/devein/defrost as required

In a frying pan on low heat add
1-2Tbsp olive oil
Hot chilli flakes to taste
2 cloves minced garlic

I like to let this sit on low heat to flavour the oil while I am prepping the noodles and veggies. Once you are almost ready to eat, turn up the heat to medium and once oil is bubbling, add shrimp.

Add salt and pepper to taste and turn shrimp over at the first sign of pink (don’t worry, you will not under cook the shrimp).

After turning all shrimp over squeeze the juice of one lime over the seafood and test seasoning. Add more salt/pepper as needed.

After about 1 minute remove from heat and place in serving bowl.

I then boil water and carefully pour into a bowl for the table. This will be used to dip the rice papers in. I keep thongs handy to fish out wayward papers. Usually the first one in the bowl gets all tangled. After that, they tend to be better. Do this by eye–you will be able to feel when it is soft enough to use–it will only take about 10 seconds, if that.

Place the soft rice paper on your plate and load it up with your favourite combination of flavours. Wrap like you would a taco, and the ends will stick together.

Enjoy and have fun! They are messy and yummy and sticky.