Summer Rolls

Here in east London you'd be a mug not have had Vietnamese food in one of the many restaurants on Kingsland Rd.  Me, I like ye old favorite Pho.  Plus any kind of large fish, deep fried and served with a salty and sweet sauce over it with sticky rice.  I also want to give a shout to 'Pork on a Stick'.  If you ever find yourself at Tay Do, a Vietnamese place that looks like a school canteen, where the staff are rude and the art awful.  For goodness sake, order pork on a stick!

Anyway I'm getting at the point and that point is, the other thing you simply must eat is a summer roll or five...  Like their distant cousin the Spring Roll or uncle Vietnamese Roll, the Summer Roll is made with rice paper.  However the difference being that you don't cook this roll and the ingredients are therefore a whole different ball game.  The outside is soft, translucent and well not at all crispy.  Thats why you have to fill it with things that go 'crunch'.  Usually in goes iceberg lettuce, beansprouts pork and/or prawn and a very important Vietnamese ingredient, MINT.

You can find these papers at most Oriental supermarkets, you dip them in hot water and they soften.  Its loads of fun, I can imagine kids would love to get involved, I know this because my boyfriend and his pal Rupert stopped complaining about where dinner was when I gave them the summer rolls to make.

Ultimately though, its all about what you dip a summer roll into.  Here is a dip.

Sauce - play around with the quantities until you have it right:

Lime Juice (1)

Brown Sugar (2 tbls)

Fish Sauce (2 tbls)

Grated Chilli

Grated Garlic

Grated Ginger

Rice Wine Vinegar (2 tbls)

Coriander Stalks Finely Chopped

Chopped Peanuts

Vegetable Oil (1 tbls)