Salad Rolls

Okay, so we had some pretty nice, hot, sunny days last week and I had this whole plan to make salad rolls on one of these eves for dinner because they are pretty much the best thing on a hot summer night. Then it got all crappy and rainy again and hot delicious stir fry has sounded much better than cold salad rolls. I am only telling you this because I was gonna take some nice pictures of them and share them here, but then I remembered I drew some illustrations of the process for another project so I will just share those and put some pics of salad rolls up when the sun comes back out. So here we go!

What you will need:

Rice paper
VEGGIES! I usually use:

• lettuce and/or cabbage (roll the leaf up and chop so you have lettuce strips, this makes it much easier to roll in the end)
• carrots (julienned)
• cucumber (skinned, use spoon to scrape out seeds and cut into long thin strips)
• basil and/or cilantro and/or mint
• those tiny rice noodles
• tofu or cooked chicken/shrimp (totally not necessary, but if it will be your whole meal a little protein makes it more filling
• avocado, red bell pepper, pear and other such things cut up in the same manner are good too
• Or pretty much anything that sounds good or you have lying around

1. So to start cook your meat and noodles and cut everything up so it is in strips no wider than 1/4" thick and 4-5ish" long. Cool your meat and noodles.

2. This is how I set things up:

I know, this might seem a bit excessive, but there is method to my madness. This just makes things into more of an assembly line and makes it waaaaay easier to crank out a ton of these puppies in a jiffy.

3. Now you can start assembly. Soak a rice sheet in your water pan until it is soft and lay flat on the cutting board. Make a pile of veggies/protein starting with lettuce/cabbage.

Then roll 'em up like this:

Use the empty plate to stack finished rolls! You can cut them in 1/2 when you are done or just serve theme whole.

I think they are best served with peanut sauce (my favorite is San-J Thai Peanut, one of the few condiments I can bring myself to buy), but you could totally dip em in anything that sounds good. I have been meaning to make a dessert version made with fruit and dipped in chocolate or something...

I like to take veggie ones to pot-lucks 'cause they are a favorite of both veggies and meaties. But on those hot summer nights when you don't want to turn on the stove they make a great meal (and make leftovers for lunch the next day!)