Aunt MJ’s Vietnamese Spring-into-Summer Rolls
1. Dig around in the back of the pantry and find your spring-roll wrappers. And your rice noodles. Can’t find the rice noodles, use angle hair Italian pasta instead.
2. Shred fine 1.5 cups of cabbage, and steam until quite soft. Set aside to cool.
3. Cook, drain, and set aside noodles.
4. Look in the fridge, look deeply in the fridge. Get your headlamp for this if necessary. Dig out the leftover scapes and scallions from last week. Pull out the herbs from last week , mint, cilantro, whatever you’ve got. Not looking great after a week wrapped limply around the back of the cottage cheese container, no worries. Just pull it out. If you have turnips leftover, pull them out now for garnish-the-plate. Now for the salad dressing for these cool salad roll-ups: condiments – pull out anything soy-saucy , anything asian, even if it’s leftover duck-sauce take-out, really, anything. Peanut sauce, yes. Any nut butter, yes. And there, grab the salad dressing, too. Grab a bowl and start mixing the sauce – improvise, create. It should be oily, salty, vinegary, sweet. Chop the old scallions fine and toss them into it. Chop/salvage the old herbs and toss them in, too. They’ve got to be chopped super-fine, like chef mincing level. Stir stir. If the sauce is thick, add a tablespoon or 2 of hot water.
5. Put the cabbage and pasta in a bigger bowl, toss together with the sauce. Reserve leftover sauce for dipping/display.
6. Roughly chop the pea shoots. Leave a few out. Very very finely dice any root vegetables you are adding in. Like really finely.
7. Set the wrappers in a low pan of just-boiled water to soften, pulling out one at a time to cutting board to roll up around the pasta, cooked cabbage, and vegetables. Be gentle with the wrappers, don’t add too much filling. I like to roll them in a 1” diameter open-ended tube, then cut into 1” long sections and arrange face-up on a platter as hors d’oevres, but they are easier to eat whole.
8. Set the spring rolls out on a platter, arrange scapes, shoots, etc as a garnish, and cover the whole thing with a wet-but-not-dripping paper towel to keep the wrappers moist until serving.
Tags: Pea Shoots, cabbage, spring rolls, scallions, herb
