Quarter Century Confessions: Easy Spring Rolls

What's that? Sunshine?! Thank goodness!!! I was thinking I was starting to get Seasonal Affective Disorder with all the cool weather and cloudy days. Granted, living in Corpus the weather is pretty mild, but this has been the coldest, longest winter I can ever remember.

So here we are and Spring has sprung (or is at least trying to spring). Time for some tasty, cool-down easy recipes. Today I'll walk you through how to make easy (and oh quite tasty) Spring rolls. They're also healthy! DOUBLE WIN.

Whenever I ~~create~~ cook in the kitchen, I find several recipes I like and combine them, add some more stuff and make them my own.

Start by making the Peanut Dipping Sauce.

For this you'll need:

4 TBS Peanut Butter
4 TBS Hoisin Sauce
6 TBS Water
2 TBS Sugar
1.5 tsp Sesame Oil
Dash of Soy sauce

Mix all ingredients in a sauce pan and heat through, stirring often until consistency is reached. This only took about 5 minutes. Be sure not to overcook!

It should turn out a nice deep carmel color.

Now pause and take a drink of wine. You just made some kickin' Asian sauce!

If you're feeling extra fancy, feel free to add some chopped peanuts on top.

Now on to the Spring Rolls!

You will need:

Rice paper
Cooked Vermicelli

(add noodles to boiling water, cook for 3 minutes, stir constantly and VOILA. Cooked vermicelli)
Be sure to let it cool

Cooked Shrimp (because YUM)

I get the frozen pre-cooked ones and just thaw em out!

Lettuce
Matchstick Carrots (because this is much easier than cutting them)
Cucumber

Peel your cucumber with a vegetable peeler. Cut off the ends. Cut into small strips.

Take out rice paper. It will be about the consistently of card stock (please be prepared for weird metaphors)

Soak in water for about 2 minutes. You can do about 3 pieces of paper at a time.

WARNING: Rice paper is tricky to work with and you have to work fast, so maybe start with just 1 piece of paper and work your way up. I promise practice makes perfect! It did for me at least.

Take the rice paper out of water. Now it will be a really gross consistency. I honestly can't think of a good metaphor besides a very thin, sticky condom. GROSS. Now put your damp paper on a cloth to get rid of some of the moisture.

Take a really quick big gulp of wine, because ew… you can't be expected to deal with this texture.

Arrange some shrimp.

Add your vermicelli, carrots and cucumber in layers. Top with lettuce. Now comes the tricky part… the rolling. Weed was never my drug of choice, so rolling isn't really my thing. If we had to uncork these bad boys on the other hand, watch out! Anyways I borrowed this nice visual display from This Travel Blog.

Like it says, start with your filling at the edge.

Fold in sides over filling.

Start rolling!

Please keep in mind the tighter you roll/fold, the better it will turn out.

Also… this texture is gross and sticky, so make sure you don't let the paper stick to itself.

Now take another quick break…. drink some wine. That was a lot of work!

If your first few rolls are ugly.. don't worry you're not alone. You will get better. My first few were definitely fails, but you know try, try again.