Del-icious!: Summer salad in a wrap with ginger & lime butter prawns

I often find myself chatting to people about food, especially if they come from a country like Korea which has such an interesting and ancient cuisine. It's at times like this I feel I really have gained some knowledge about the foods of different countries, especially Japanese, Korean and Brazilian, thanks to all the ESL students I have taught over the years. No matter where you come from, food is a topic that gets everyone talking and is a popular, reliable theme to get students chatting. Putting them into small, mixed nationality groups and simply saying "talk about the food of your country", can have them going for hours. Sometimes, when they are required to make a presentation, they choose food and a fascinating half hour of culinary insight can be had by fellow students and teachers alike.

These beautiful salad rolls came about through such a chat with a girl I met at a friend's party. The actual rolls she told me about were a little different, using soaked thinly sliced daikon as a wrap rather than rice paper and also including seared beef fillet rather than the prawns I chose. The link she provided was so pretty, as was her explanation that these are made as appetisers to impress guests, I decided to make a version for a special occasion last week. They are delicate, tasty and healthy, basically a raw salad wrapped up in a piece of edible paper. As I used no seasoning on the vegetables and herbs and only a little flavoured butter on the prawns, these were served with a peanut dip. The other alternative is to gently marinade the raw veg in some sort of seasonings like soy sauce, lime juice, sugar and fish sauce for a while. This would provide more flavour inside and require minimum dip. I really wanted the raw freshness of the herbs and veg to shine through, however, so people could help themselves to as much spicy, sweet and nutty dip as they liked.

Recipe : Salad rolls

The ingredients for these rolls include vermicelli, extremely thin and delicate rice noodles, (I used a brown rice variety), which helps to adhere everything together. They only need soaking for a few minutes in hot water and provide a nice meaty texture.

For 12

12 pieces of rice paper

36 medium sized raw, shelled prawns

2 tsp butter and 1 tsp oil (I used lime, ginger and cilantro flavoured butter, you could add a pinch of ginger and a squeeze of lime juice to the butter as the prawns fry)

24 large mint leaves

3/4 cup vermicelli

1.5 large carrots, peeled and cut into thin matchsticks

1 cucumber, cut into thin matchsticks

2 medium sized bell peppers, seeded and cut into matchsticks

1 pack of enoki mushrooms

1 bunch of garlic chives

12 small sprigs of cilantro

peanut dipping sauce, (any bought variety is fine or sweet chili sauce)

Prepare all your ingredients. Fry the prawns in butter and oil in a pan over medium heat until pink and cooked through. Set aside. Place the vermicelli into a bowl and pour boiling water over to cover. Leave for a few minutes until soft, then drain and set aside. Shred the carrots, cucumber and bell peppers into thin, long matchsticks and cut the ends off the mushrooms and separate gently. Cut the garlic chives into 3 inch lengths approximately.

Pour boiling water into a tray or baking dish large enough to hold a piece of rice paper completely flat and place your first piece into the water. Allow to soak for a few minutes until soft and then carefully take out and lay onto a clean tea towel on a flat surface. Use another clean tea towel to soak up water from the top by laying over the paper and gently pressing. Before starting the assembly of the rolls, place another piece of rice paper in to soak.

Lay three prawns in a line, starting from the top edge and cover with 2 mint leaves. lay about 1 tbsp of vermicelli on top of this and then cover with a few pieces of carrot, cucumber, pepper, mushrooms, chives and cilantro, ensuring some pieces are lying above the top of the edge. First fold the bottom of the paper onto itself to hold everything in and then fold over the left hand side tightly. Start gently rolling the wrap over itself as tightly as you can until you have encased everything inside. The paper will easily stick together but is very delicate, be careful not to tear, although a few little holes won't matter. Place the prepared rolls onto a plate lined with cling film which will prevent them from rolling together and touching each other, which would be disastrous as they would stick together. Repeat with the rest of the rice paper and fillings. Refrigerate or serve immediately with the dipping sauce.