Spring Rolls!

I wanted to bring something fun and tasty as an appetizer to my Thanksgiving party. With some help and brainstorming, I decided on spring rolls. I've never made them before and they were a bit time-intensive with all the veggie chopping and prep of the rice paper, but they are fun to make! I didn't use a recipe but did talk to a few different people before getting to work. I used up my carrots, a cucumber, a bell pepper, a leek, a bunch of cilantro and mint. I started by chopping all those things up. Oh and I used some lettuce!

Ingredients:

•  Loose leaf lettuce
• Bunch of cilantro
• Bunch of mint
• Bell pepper
• Several carrots
• One big cucumber
• One long leek
• One package of rice paper
• One package of rice noodles
• Rice vinegar
• Sesame oil
• Fresh ginger
• Hoisin sauce
• Sweet thai chili sauce

First, I chopped the veggies.

Second, I prepared the noodles by soaking them and then boiling them for a bit. The package didn't say to boil them but I wanted them squishier than they were.

Then I assembled then. I placed the rice paper in a bowl of warm-ish/room-temperature water for about 5 seconds and then placed it on a damp kitchen towel. After a few seconds, in which time the rice paper turned soft, I placed the different ingredients in the rice paper and rolled it up like a baby burrito.

I ended up making about 15 of them. I made more than the ones on this tray and I gave them to Jill and her boyfriend Yoshi to enjoy. She came up stairs and ate some for dinner with me. We did a taste test of two different sauces: freshly chopped ginger, cilantro in rice vinegar with sesame oil. The other sauce was the sweet thai chili sauce. Both delicious.

I placed the rolls on a damp kitchen towel and then placed another damp towel on top of them. I have them in the refridgerator and hope they travel nicely up to the mountains tomorrow. I'm bringing some of the sauces too so we can enjoy them as an appetizer before dinner! Wish me luck :)

A close up shot of one of the rolls. They turned out a bit fatter than I'd imagined but I couldn't figure out a way to make them smaller since I wanted to add that amount of filling to each roll....so typical of me: I always have the fattest burritos around too!!