Weekend Brunch | Vietnamese Summer Rolls

It summer-time! What you thought of having during the summer? Mine? It will be none others but my favorite Vietnamese rolls! I start enjoying Vietnamese food with the influence of my friends back at work 3 years ago. I enjoyed Vietnamese food because it’s light in flavors, the fresh crunchy texture, sometimes it can be crispy but always juicy and filled with fragrant. Also, I could have many bites without worrying my weight. Recall back, I think I will at least have it once a week. Then, I thought since I enjoy it so much I should start learning to make it myself as it wasn’t hard to do it. Right now I believed, that’s a crazy fascination of what I love to eat.

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When come to making these summer rolls, we love to visit the wet market and check the ingredients. Taking a stroll at the market, there are so many fresh fruits, vegetables, and herbs for you to choose at. It’s always quite interesting walking around the wet market as times, you could communicate with the stall owner as compared to the supermarket where you could just grab your items and go.

In fact, summer rolls were what first hooked us on the fresh flavors of Vietnamese cooking: so much lighter and punchier than the fried snacks I was expecting. Gourmet magazine’s description – “a salad packed into an edible container” – sums them up nicely.

Since we love summer rolls, we try to come up with ways to enjoy as many of them as possible. In this sense, Vietnamese summer roll is just brilliant! It is easy and quick to make and tastes fresh, crunchy and creamy all at the same time. It is a perfect combination!

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I believed that not everyone will fall in love with the rolls especially when it is almost raw in flavor. For instance, my mom doesn’t really like the raw taste, so we discuss and decide to make it two ways. In order to cater both our parent and our liking. This week, we decide to share you our recipe for the Vietnamese summer rolls we always have at home!

Ingredient |

For the filling |

• 200 g of rice noodles
• 250 g of prawns
• 200g of lean pork meat, sliced
• 1 cucumber
• 1 carrot
• 1 bunch of coriander
• 1 bunch of mints
• ½ a bunch of chives
• 100 g of bean sprout

For the sauce |

• 3 cloves of garlic
• 3 tbs of fish sauce
• 2 tbs of sugar
• 250 ml of water
• Half a lime
• chilli

Directions |

The filling|

1. Preheat the oven. Line the pork onto the parchment paper. Drizzle it with olive oil and season it with salt and pepper. Bake it in the oven for 10 minutes. Leave it to cool.
2. Cut the prawn in half. Poached it under hot water for a minute. Drain and leave it to cool.
3. Boil the rice noodles, too, as instructed on the packet, drain off the water and then rinse briefly in cold water. Drain off the water again.
4. Peel the cucumber and the carrot, then cut them into small sticks. Halve the chives, so that their length corresponds to half of the rice-paper. Rinse the coriander and mint with cold water. Pick the mint leaves off the stalks.

The sauce |

1. Peel and chop the garlic. Chop the chili into small pieces.
2. Mix it all with the fish sauce and stir in the water and the sugar. Squeeze the lime, and add the juice. Moreover, you can also use vinegar instead of lime juice. Garnish with coriander to your taste.

‘Ready to roll’?

For the rice-roll|

1. Briefly, wet the rice paper with lukewarm water, and place it on a large plate. Careful! Don’t wet the rice paper too much, since otherwise it may tear when you roll it.
2. First of all, place the mint a bit above the bottom edge of the rice paper, then distribute a small portion of rice noodles on top. Leave the side edge free. Then place the cucumber and carrot on top. Later on, insert the chives so that they protrude from the roll at the sides. Lay the prawn halves on the heap of rice noodles.
3. To roll them up, first place the bottom edge of the rice paper over the filling, then fold over the side edges of the rice paper towards the filling and finish rolling it up. Press it all firmly together.

For the egg wrapper roll |

4. Place the egg roll wrapper on a large plate. Repeat step 2, however, lay the pork instead of the prawn.

5. To roll them up, first place the bottom edge of the egg roll wrapper over the filling, then fold over the side edges of the egg roll wrapper towards the filling and finish rolling it up. Add some egg wash at the side of the side of the wrapper and press it all firmly together.

6. Heat the oil on high heat to 200°C, deep fry the roll until golden brown or for 8 minutes. Drip the oil and leave it cool.

Now dip them in the sauce and enjoy! Please try it and share your thought with us by sending us emails, tag us on Instagram or twitter. Thank you, happy Friday!

xoxo, Angela.