Week 34 - Opposite Side of the World

The theme for Week 34 was "opposite side of the world." Using the Antipodes Map, I figured out that the exact opposite side of the world from us was in the ocean off the coast of western Australia. We've already had Australian week, so I didn't want to do that again. Instead I looked along the entire meridian that lined up with the opposite side of the world, which led me to Southeast Asia. My original plan was to do something Indonesian but rather than go ingredient hunting, I switched it up and decided to do Vietnamese summer rolls. I've had spring roll wrappers and vermicelli in the pantry for ages so it would let me use some of that up.

The last time I made summer rolls was in college. The Vietnamese students association had some sort of party (I don't remember the details) and they had ingredients laid out for you to assemble summer rolls on your own. It was the first time I had ever done it, and while it was really fun, I was pretty bad at it. I watched some Vietnamese friends quickly and nimbly roll them up, and thought with practice maybe I could get there. I bought the materials a while ago, but of course, never got around to making them. Cooking from the opposite side of the world was the perfect opportunity to try again.

I looked at a bunch of different recipes for summer/spring rolls and thought about all the rolls we've eaten over the years (many, many rolls since we love eating them so much), and then put all that together to come up with a plan for our rolls.

The rolls required:

- 10 rice roll wrappers

- 2-3 oz of rice vermicelli

- 1 hothouse cucumber

- 1 lb of carrots

- 1/2 bunch of mint

- 1/3 bunch of cilantro

- 32 small/medium cooked shrimp (only enough shrimp for 8 rolls)

- 1/2 bag of romaine lettuce

I honestly have no idea how much this cost. I bought the wrappers and vermicelli so long ago that any estimation is probably completely wrong. The ingredients above that I do know the prices of cost about $12, but that also doesn't include the sauce. This wasn't a cheap dinner, that's for sure, but it did make a lot of food.

I was planning a sauce of 2 parts of hoisin sauce to 1 part peanut butter with some water whisked in to thin it out. Unfortunately the bottle in the fridge that I thought was hoisin sauce was actually oyster sauce and we had no hoisin sauce. This is what it looks like when you have to make your own. Luckily A was able to make the sauce while I prepped all the other stuff, since the prep for this recipe is somewhat labor intensive.

We followed this recipe for hoisin sauce, mixing up soy sauce, peanut butter, molasses (finally a use for molasses after Jamaican week!), rice vinegar, a finely minced garlic clove, sesame oil, sriracha, and black pepper, and then adding another 1/3 cup of peanut butter, to get closer to the 2:1 sauce ratio I was going to do originally. A combined all of that together on the stove, let it warm, added some water, and it smelled really good. I don't know exactly how much all of this came out to, but probably $1, $2 at the most. It made more than enough sauce and we had leftovers, so we probably didn't need to make this entire pot of sauce.

Other than the sauce, there isn't really any "cooking" involved in summer rolls. Just a lot of prep and assembly. For the prep, we needed to thaw out our cooked shrimp, peel and grate the carrots, thinly slice the cucumber, roughly chop the mint, pull apart the cilantro leaves, chop the lettuce, and prepare the noodles. I guess there's cooking involved in preparing the vermicelli, but it's really just boiling a pot of water and then letting the noodles sit in the water until they're al dente (or the desired texture).

To assemble, quickly soak the spring roll wrapper in warm (or room temperature) water (no more than a few seconds), pile everything inside, and then roll it up. It sounds easy but it's not really that simple. You have to make sure you don't over (or under) soak the wrapper, don't add too much inside, and figure out how to roll it tightly without ripping the wrapper.

I was clearly out of practice with rolling the summer rolls, but by the fourth roll, it was actually looking much better. I felt proud that my roll wrapping was actually getting better over the course of the night!

The rolls themselves were quite good. The sauce was a little on the salty side, but that could also be because I used way too much of it. What we like most about summer rolls is how fresh and light they taste, and even piling all the ingredients into ours, they still retained that lightness. The shrimp were good, the vegetables made it feel really healthy, and the herbs added great flavoring. I love summer rolls, so I would definitely be interested in having more summer roll nights, but the prep did take a while. We do have a lot more roll wrappers left. Maybe I'll figure out a variation that doesn't require as much prep time!