Summertime Spring Rolls

Last week, as I was planning dinner for the week, I wanted to find some light and healthy recipes to make.  Not only did they need to be light and healthy but the recipes needed to be simple as I did not want to buy a million ingredients to make one night's worth of food.  I know I am not the only that thinks that way.  I was Pinteresting around and came across a picture of shrimp and avocado spring rolls.  I like shrimp.  I like avocado.  I like spring.  I like rolls.  So there you go!

I remember there was a week or so when I was younger when my mom went through a phase of making spring rolls.  I'm not talking like one or two spring rolls, but like we-were-going-to-eat-spring-rolls-for-two-weeks kind of amount.  That's a lot.  And naturally I got soooo sick of them.  Don't get me wrong, they were so delish, there was just too many of them and I needed variety.  Like a steak.  Yummm steak.

Anywho, ingredients for spring rolls are simple and easy to find even at regular grocery stores (as opposed to thinking you must go to an Asian specific store.  Here are the ingredients I included in my spring rolls:

• cucumbers
• green leaf lettuce
• basil
• cilantro
• avocados
• carrots
• red cabbage
• cooked shrimp, sliced in half lengthwise
• dried bean threads, aka vermicelli or rice noodles I think
• spring roll wrappers

To make spring rolls, it's all about the preparation.  Assembling them is not difficult as long as you don't over stuff them causing the delicate wrappers to rip.  But prepping all the ingredients so they are ready to go is the key!  Slice the cucumbers and avocados, chop the lettuce and herbs, cook the shrimp and slice them in half and to make it easier on me I brought pre-sliced carrots and cabbage that was already shredded. 

As for the rice noodles, I remember my first experience with this weird stuff.  I totally ruined it back in the day when I thought I was suppose to treat it like regular noodles and boil the stuff (think ramen).  However after reading instructions, you're suppose to boil water, then take it off the heat and soak the rice noodles in there for about 5 minutes then drain.  Mix it with some rice vinegar and line it up with the other ingredients on your assembly line.

For the spring roll wrappers, this was my first time working with these as well.  I poured hot water into a glass pie dish and dipped one wrapper at a time to soften it.  See the wrappers are dried, weird and stiff paper thin things that come to life after soaking for about 15 seconds in the hot water.  It was tricky getting them out because the water was so hot it burned my fingers so I had to use chopsticks but then it was too slippery.  Ah, such issues I have.  :)  Just kidding.  Eventually the water cooled down a little to where it was bearable to touch and grab the wrapper out.  I placed it on a piece of parchment paper and started assembling.  Another key to a successful spring roll is not to over fill it.  I'm such the fan of the philosophy "more is better" hence the reason I like all you can eat buffets so much. But if I overfilled the spring roll it would make it quite difficult to roll up and as a result it would just fall apart and that is an epic fail (see pic below).  Ok, not an epic fail, but not good.

After a while, I got the hang of it and make around 12 of them.  I didn't want to bother with a homemade peanut dipping sauce so we got some premade sauce in a jar and added chopped peanuts for additional crunch. 

I plopped them in front of my husband for dinner and after his first bites, he praised how amazing they were and that this was the new most amazing thing I've ever made!!!  I don't remember the old most amazing thing I've ever made.  Oh well.  We devoured almost all of them and managed to stop ourselves from eating the last two so they can be saved for his lunch the next day.  I think next time i will switch out the basil and cilantro and go a more traditional route with mint.  I'd also like to add small slices of chicken with the shrimp.  YUM!