My new favourite thing

As of yesterday, my new favourite thing - foodwise - is rice paper. Made into summer rolls. I'd had them once before when my sister made them, but she is a massively multiple ingredient fan who uses no less than 5 cloves of garlic in any dish, so I wasn't crazy about them. The professionally-made ones I had yesterday, however, were fantastic. They were so fresh and were just the right thing for a snack on a hot humid sunny day. They contained cooked rice noodles, crunchy lettuce, julienned carrots, and a few mint leaves and came with peanut dipping sauce. I was sceptical of the mint before I tried it, but it was the perfect addition.

So motivated, I picked up the basic ingredients, some rice paper ($1.50 for 40 9-inch rounds) and rice vermicelli (99 cents for a package of 8 serving-sized noodle bricks), at an Asian grocery store today (yay for living in the Chinatown-Little Italy borderlands)... they are both available in the Asian food sections of most bigger grocery stores, but will be a bit more expensive. One brick of noodles is enough for 3 large summer rolls, and 3 summer rolls is a good amount for a medium-sized person as a large snack or small meal. The rest of the ingredients are mainly veggies - lettuce is pretty standard, and julienned carrots and cucumber are common, as well as chives or garlic greens - and for you meat eaters, a neat little row of 3 shrimp, or shredded beef or chicken bits. I'm a fish-only eater, so maybe one day I'll brave-up and try it with tuna or something, but for now the veg version is perfect.

Rice paper is kind of threatening when you look at it in the package, the sheets are thin and brittle and always made me wonder if you need a giant pot to boil them in. Turns out all you need is a container big enough fit the paper inside (I use a 9 inch cake pan) and some water, the most difficult part is getting them home from the store without breaking them. You just dip them in the water for a couple seconds and then lay them on a clean cloth or cutting board and start putting in all the fillings you want. By the time you are ready to roll them up (burrito-style) they have softened. I'm not gonna lie, the rice paper is kind of like skin. It makes me think of a research paper I did in grade 6 about Aztecs. They had one god in their pantheon who wore a cape made of human skin and I'm pretty sure it would have looked like he was wearing a cape made of softened rice paper. Anyway, all gross associations aside, rice paper is great and I will be making many summer rolls in the near future. Tomorrow they will include avocado.

Oh, and make yourself some peanut dipping sauce for your summer rolls. There are many variations on the recipe out there, usually including peanut butter (of course), soy sauce, maybe a bit of sesame oil, some form of garlic and something spicy like chillis or chilli powder. I improvised mine based on what I had in the house (i.e. no hoisin sauce) and it was good.