Fresh spring roll, sum­mer roll or salad roll is a Viet­namese dish tra­di­tion­ally con­sist­ing of cooked shrimp, rice noodles, and plenty of fresh herbs and veget­ables for fla­vour and crunch. Once your ingredi­ents are prepped, the rolling fun begins as sheets of rice paper are softened in water and used for the wrap­pers. These light, fresh and healthy Viet­namese rolls are dipped in a lightly spiced bean sauce, and make a great light lunch or appet­iser at any time of the day.

We have been mak­ing these rice-paper rolls at Res­taur­ant 88 since 2006 and you can still find them on our menu after all this time. This is one of those dishes that does not go out of fash­ion; in fact, it only gets bet­ter over time as we intro­duce new and excit­ing ingredi­ents and flavours.

Rice-paper rolls

Ingredients

For the dip­ping sauce

• ½ cup water
• 3 tbsp salty bean sauce
• 1 tbsp gran­u­lated sugar
• 2 tsp chilli-gar­lic paste

For the rolls

• 100g dried rice vermicelli
• 16 sheets rice paper
• 24 cooked prawns, shelled and sliced in half
• 200g boiled pork belly, sliced
• 1 cup beansprouts
• Fresh mixed herbs — mint, Thai basil, cori­ander, chives, Viet­namese mint
• Some lettuce leaves, cut into quarters

Method

1. First make the dip­ping sauce: simply put the ingredi­ents in a sauce­pan, bring to a sim­mer and boil until the sauce thick­ens slightly.
2. To make the rolls, start by cook­ing the rice ver­mi­celli accord­ing to the pack­age dir­ec­tions. Drain and set aside.
3. Fill a shal­low dish large enough to hold the rice-paper wrap­pers with hot tap water. Work­ing with one wrap­per at a time, com­pletely sub­merge the wrap­per until it is soft and pli­able (about 15 seconds). Remove the wrap­per from the water and place it on the worktop.
4. Work­ing quickly, lay three prawn halves in a row, cut side up, just above the centre of the wrap­per, leav­ing about 2cm of space on each side.
5. Lay­er a scant ¼ cup of the rice noodles over the shrimp, fol­lowed by some pork, a few beans­prouts, two mint leaves, two basil leaves, one sprig of cori­ander, and some Viet­namese mint and lettuce.
6. Fold the bot­tom half of the rice-paper wrap­per over the filling. Hold­ing the whole thing firmly in place, fold the sides of the wrap­per in to the middle.
7. Then, press­ing firmly down to hold the folds in place, roll the entire wrap­per hori­zont­ally up from the bot­tom to the top.
8. Repeat with the remain­ing wrap­pers and fillings.
9. If not serving imme­di­ately, keep the rolls tightly covered with plastic wrap at room tem­per­at­ure for up to 3 hours. Serve with the dip­ping sauce.

Makes 16 rolls