Carefree Cooking

Vietnamese Salad Roll

Although it involves multiple steps, making vietnamese salad rolls at home is relatively easy. The good thing about this dish is that it involves almost no cooking at all. Here are the key ingredients in assembling the salad roll.

• Vietnamese Rice Paper (wrap)
• Rice noodle
• Bean sprouts
• Sliced Barbeque Pork/Shrimp/Ham
• Parsley/Cilantro (optional)

Depending on what type of rice noodle you get, you might either need to hydrate it in boiling water or just let it soak in hot water. Guess what, that's all the cooking you need!

To begin assembling the roll, hydrate the Vietnamese Rice Paper in a big pan filled with warm water. If you get the good rice paper, it will only take around 15-20 seconds to fully soften the paper. Take out of the pan and place on a plate. I like to put a piece of paper towel on top of the plate to absorb any excess water. Place a handful of rice noodle on the rice paper and add your fresh ingredients on top of the rice noodle. When I said shrimp, I don't mean raw shrimp. You can use the cocktail shrimp as these are already cooked. Wrap the salad roll as you would wrap a burrito. This is the trickest part of the assembly. Practice definetely makes perfect so don't be discouraged the first few times when things don't look too pretty. Eventually you'll get the hang of it and you will be ready to serve these to your friends.

I would like to thank Martin Yan and the food network for providing the recipe for the sauce. I've tried so many times to make peanut sauce but always failed until I saw Martin Yan make it. At first I was skeptical but tried it anyways since I didn't have a better recipe. To my surprise (and delight), the sauce tasted very authentic. Ok, I don't really know how an authentic peanut sauce taste like, but it was pretty good so that's all I need to know. Here's the recipe.

• teaspoons oil
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 2/3 cup chicken broth
• 1/4 cup hoisin sauce
• 3 tbsp chunky peanut butter
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• 1 tsp chili garlic sauce
• 1/3 cup chopped roasted peanuts, 1 tablespoon reserved for garnish

The roasted peanuts are optional since I bet not a lot of people would have this lying around at home. But as I mentioned many times, adding texture to the food bring a whole new dimension in the dining experience so it is highly recommended. As an alternative, you can put anything crispy like fried wontons (if you have leftovers from takeout) or any other type of nuts.

The recipe is very forgiving so you don't need to have everything exact. When I make this sauce, I just approximate it and it still ends up tasting good. Give it a try and tell me what you think.

posted by carefreecooking @ 9:21 PM