Delicious pork belly and prawn fresh rice paper rolls
Time to prepare 20 mins | Serves 4-6
A great fresh-tasting starter or snack, and you can even get creative with the ingredients you put inside!
“Although I love Vietnamese fried spring rolls, these fresh rice paper rolls are my favourite rolls to eat. They’re light and delicious and hugely popular in Vietnam as well as all around the world,” says chef Adam Liaw.
Recipe from Asian Cookery School by Adam Liaw (Hachette, RRP $49.99) -.
Ingredients:
- 300g pork belly, skin and bone removed
- 1 tbsp salt
- 100g dried rice vermicelli
- 30 rice paper sheets
- 3 cups shredded iceberg lettuce
- 1 cup loosely packed mint
- 1 cup loosely packed coriander or perilla
- 300g cooked prawns, peeled, deveined and split lengthways
- 1 bunch Chinese chives, halved
- 1 cup Nuoc Cham* (see tip below), to serve
*If you don’t feel like making it yourself or can’t find Nuoc Cham at your local Asian supermarket then try it with sweet chilli sauce or experiment with your favourite Asian dipping sauce.
Directions
1. Place the pork belly in a pot just big enough to fit it. Cover with cold water. Add the salt, bring the water to a simmer and simmer for 20 minutes, or until the pork belly is cooked through. Remove from the water and allow to cool. Thinly slice the pork into 5cm wide slices no more than a few millimetres thick.
2. Place the rice vermicelli in a large bowl and pour over plenty of boiling water. Leave for 5 minutes then drain, rinse in cold water, drain again and cut into 5cm lengths.
3. Fill a large bowl with lukewarm water and dip a sheet of rice paper into the water until it slightly softens. (It will continue to soften out of the water.) Transfer the rice paper to a plate and place a pile of pork, lettuce, rice vermicelli and some mint and coriander on the paper in a line just in from the edge closest to you.
4. Place a few prawns at the centre of the paper with the orange backs facing down and roll the paper, folding in the edges halfway along, as shown. Add a few spears of chives just before finishing the roll so the cut ends stick out of the top. Serve with Nuoc Cham.
Tips:
- Keeping the prawns separate from the other fillings is purely for presentation, so you can see the colourful backs facing outward through a single layer of rice paper.
- You don’t need to do all the work yourself – you can put the ingredients on platters on the dining table with bowls of warm water to dip the rice papers into and everyone can make their own.
- The filling of the rolls can be whatever you like. Try leftover Lemongrass Beef or shredded chicken.
Republished with permission of Wyza.com.au.