Easy No-Cook Rice Paper Rolls

Sometimes a salad just won't cut it for me, but a full carb-heavy meal isn't right either. Today was one of those days, and I was craving a light, fresh but satisfying dinner.
I scrummaged around and found a pack of rice paper sheets that I decided would be the perfect base to my light summery meal.

These are amazingly versatile and taste so fresh you feel like you're eating rainbows!

The magic of these rice paper rolls is that they are easy and convenient because when it comes to the filling -practically anything goes. The traditional vietnamese rice paper rolls are known to have a shrimp-based filling and some vegetables as well. However, I didn't have any shrimp so I had to make do with something else.

All the ingredients you need. Plus the rice paper, of course :P

As long as you balance out the textures within your roll, anything should be fine. I cut up a red pepper, some cucumber and a small portion of smoked tofu (in place of seafood or meat). In case I wasn't satisfied by that, I softened up a packet of vermicelli as well to give the meal a bit more carbohydrate. For the sauce, I initially wanted to use this raspberry-blackberry-basil vinaigrette, but it proved to be a bit too dessert-like. So I dug out some natural peanut butter and improvised a peanut butter sauce for the dish.

The final product! The peanut sauce went much better with the rolls :)

To make the peanut butter sauce:

Mix together:

1 spoon of peanut butter

Several drops of pure toasted sesame oil

A splash of soya sauce

Several drops of fish sauce

The verdict?

Perhaps you'll be as surprised as I was to hear that 3 rolls were actually more than sufficient to fill me up and satisfy my carb cravings. I ended up having four because there were leftover rolls, but in reality could've happily stopped at three. So the verdict is that they are a good all-rounded, low calorie meal that could be easily adaptable to different tastes/allergies/etc. What are you waiting for? Get rolling!

What are your filling recommendations?

Nikki