Vietnamese Spring Rolls

I finally made Vietnamese Spring Rolls, or Goi Cuon!

I used Youki brand rice paper wrappers, and since this was my first experience with rice paper, I have no idea if that's a good brand or not.  All the recipes I read online said soak the wrappers in water for 2-5 seconds. I did that, and said, "Huh, it doesn't seem soft enough." (As if I had any idea what I was doing.) So I soaked it longer. The wrapper then proceeded to tear, stick, and be otherwise ornery. So then I tried 5 seconds.  Worked like a charm after that, just like making a burrito.

I stuffed them with shrimp, green leaf lettuce (not iceberg!), bean sprouts, carrots, cucumber, green onion, cilantro and mint. I also threw in some cooked Mai Fun rice sticks because I couldn't find bean threads. I would've loved some roast pork, but no deli around here has it, and I wasn't about to roast some pork on a Tuesday night after working my ass off all day. More herbs would've been nice, like basil (but my plant died, I'm the only person in the world who can kill basil), or Vietnamese coriander (good luck finding that in a 30 mile radius!).

For a dipping sauce, I made hoisin peanut dipping sauce, courtesy of Todd and Diane from White on Rice Couple.

And who would've thought of this but a 14-year old obsessed with pasta, but leftover Mai Fun is pretty good with garlic, butter and parmesan.