Asian Summer Rolls with Dipping Sauce Recipe

Ingredients

Vietnamese Rice Paper Sheets (you can buy them in packets of several round sheets)
Japanese Nori (you can buy these in dried sheets)
Raw King prawns
Courgettes (spiralised)
Red or spring onion (very thinly sliced)
Chestnut mushrooms (sliced in to four)
Cucumber (sliced in to thin batons)
Iceberg lettuce (cut in to thin strips)
Sesame seeds
Soy sauce
Toasted Sesame oil
Kaffir lime leaf
Garlic (crushed or finely chopped)
Good quality salt

Method

Heat a large pan on the stove and add the sesame seeds – toasting till golden (takes about 2 minutes – stirring or shaking the pan regularly to ensure they don’t burn). Place the toasted sesame seeds in a dish to cool.
Now tear some nori sheets in to squares about 4”x4” and add these to the pan. Allow to toast just long enough for them to turn bright
green (about 10 seconds on each side). Set these aside too.
Keep some of the toasted sheet squares whole for later, and put the rest of them in to a food processor with the toasted sesame seeds and add some good quality salt.
Use your food processor to turn the three ingredients in to a powder which you will use later and which you can store to use in future as a wonderfully flavoursome seasoning.
In a small dish combine equal measures of toasted sesame oil and soy sauce. Add a finely sliced kafir lime leaf and some crushed garlic. Stir – this will be your dipping sauce and also the marinade for your prawns and mushrooms.
Place your prawns and mushrooms on a baking tray and brush with the marinade. Place under a hot grill for a few minutes on each side till cooked. Set aside.
Spiralise your courgettes and place in a bowl. Drizzle with toasted sesame oil and turn with your fingers to make sure it’s well combined. Set aside.
Cut your cucumber, lettuce and onion. Create a ‘preparation station’ with each of your different summer roll ingredients (prawns and mushrooms; spiralised courgettes; sesame, nori and salt seasoning; toasted nori squares; cucumber, lettuce and onion) and a large glass board (to create your rolls on).
Now half fill a large bowl with warm water. Take two of your rice paper rounds and submerge them in the water for about 5 seconds or until they are pliable. Lift them out and place them on your glass board overlapping side by side (so that you have a shape like a figure of 8 turned on its side).
Place a small amount of the prawns and mushrooms in the middle of the shape and then add small amounts of the courgette and salad on top. Sprinkle generously with the sesame, nori and salt seasoning which you made earlier, and then fold over the sides and roll tightly to create your Vietnamese Roll.
Place each roll on a dish – to be eaten with your hands – and serve with the dipping sauce.
For some of your rolls, you might like to begin by placing one of your squares of toasted nori in the centre of your rice paper ‘figure of 8’ and put all of the other ingredients on top of this. Doing so makes it easier to roll and will provide you with a contrasting appearance to the other transparent rolls (see the picture).

Recipe notes by Nicola Wilkinson

Everyone I know who grows their own vegetables is overwhelmed by the amount of courgettes they currently have so I decided to create this month’s Seasonal recipe using this wonderfully versatile vegetable.

August also gives life to cucumber, onions, chestnut mushrooms and lettuce so I have paired all these vegetables with flavours and ingredients from Vietnam, Japan and China to produce what I hope you will agree is a delicious summer meal.

Note that it can take a few attempts to get the ‘fold and roll’ technique right! I promise that after doing a few you will be much better at it! Even if you manage to create perfectly neat, tightly rolled, Vietnamese rolls, you’ll find that eating them is a fun, messy and delicious experience.

To explore August’s seasonal bounty try using the following this month: Courgettes, onions, cucumber, lettuce, chestnut mushrooms, tomatoes, sweetcorn, raspberries, blueberries, beetroot, plums, cherries, carrots, cauliflower, broad beans, broccoli, potatoes, Bramley and Discovery apples, chillies, fennel, basil, chives, coriander, mint, parsley, thyme, tarragon, sage, rosemary, and many more.