Dinner Tonight: Fresh Homemade Thai Salad Rolls with Peanut Sauce

One of my family's favorite treats to get when we go hiking near Hood River, Oregon, is the fresh salad rolls from Lampoei's Thai food cart. So, when I was browsing the aisles at an Asian market a week ago and saw packages of rice paper with a pretty picture of salad rolls on the label, I thought, "I could make those." It is so easy to find good new recipes online. I often read through the first two or three I see that have positive reviews and loosely follow one or more, thus creating my own variation of a recipe. The approximate recipes I used follow the photos of my creation. I plan to stir fry some snow peas from the garden with some red bell pepper, mushrooms, garlic, and ginger to go with it. Maybe I'll also put in some chicken or tofu to make a complete meal. This meal would be great for a hot summer day. We are about 10 degrees cooler and 15mph windier than ideal, but we'll have to find a way to enjoy it anyway.

Fresh Thai Salad Rolls

carrots, cut into small matchsticks
cucumber, cut into small matchsticks

rice vermicelli (size XS; I found some from Jiangxi Province in China, where Ellie was born!), cook/soften in hot water, ten rinse, let cool, and chop
mixed salad greens, chopped (I used some from my garden, which has been loving our cool early summer)
cilantro, chopped
scallions (green onions), diced

I tossed the above four ingredients (vermicelli through scallions) with the following light dressing:
1 Tbs soy sauce
1 Tbs rice vinegar
a little less than 1 Tbs fish sauce
a pinch of brown sugar

rice paper (banh trang; I used medium size, 25cm)

Soak the rice paper in warm water. Put on some of the greens mixture. Layer on some carrots and cukes. Roll up carefully.

Salad Roll prep

Assembling salad roll

Peanut Sauce:
The amounts are approximate, as I wanted it a little thinner so kept adding a little more water, coconut milk, lime juice, and soy sauce to thin it out and get the taste I wanted.

1 C creamy peanut butter
1/2 C coconut milk
3 Tbs water
2 Tbs soy sauce
1 Tbs fish sauce
hot sauce (I used about 1 tsp chili garlic sauce, because that's what I had; use up to 1Tbs hot sauce of your choosing, depending on how spicy you like it)
1 Tbs fresh ginger, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped

Put it all in a food processor and puree until smooth.
Add some chopped cilantro just before serving, or as a garnish.

Enjoy!