Roasted Salmon Summer Rolls with a Peanut Dipping Sauce
Lunch Break: Imprint Projects











POSTED UNDER
- Asian,
- Party Salad,
- Winter
INGREDIENTS
- AVOCADO,
- BASIL,
- CARROTS,
- CILANTRO,
- green onion,
- JICAMA,
- peanut,
- peanut butter,
- peanut sauce,
- rice noodles,
- salmon,
- TOFU,
- vermicelly
NOTES
Great for a party, create a “make your own” station with various ingredients. You can add any vegetable to this – bean sprouts, peppers, shredded mango. Just make sure everything is in a matchstick size/shape. Make this vegan by substituting baked tofu for the salmon. This recipe requires specialty Asian food items (rice paper wrappers) and takes some technique to assemble. Once you get the hang of it, time flies.
RECIPE
DIFFICULTY
HARD
SERVES
8
PREP TIME
30 MINS
Salmon
-
2lbWild Atlantic Salmon
-
1tbsed pepper jelly. Alternately, use 2 tsp Huy Fong Chili sauce and 2 tsp honey
-
1tspv micro-grated ginger root
-
1tbsTamari
-
1tspRice Wine vinegar
-
2tbstoasted sesame oil
-
1tspsesame seeds
Dipping Sauce
-
3tbschunky, high quality peanut butter
-
1/4cuphoisin sauce
-
1/4cupwater
-
1tspfish sauce (optional)
-
1tspmicro-grated fresh ginger root
-
1/4tspdried red chili flakes
Rolls
-
1packageround rice paper wrappers
-
1tspvegetable oil
-
1jicama, trimmed, peeled and cut into 3” matchstick pieces
-
1/2tspkosher salt
-
1packagevermicelli
-
4green onions, ends trimmed, thinly sliced
-
1carrot, peeled and sliced with julienne slicer
-
1bunchcilantro
-
1bunchbasil, or Thai basil
-
1bunchmint
-
1Hass avocado, slice into matchstick pieces
POSTED UNDER
- Asian,
- Party Salad,
- Winter
INGREDIENTS
- AVOCADO,
- BASIL,
- CARROTS,
- CILANTRO,
- green onion,
- JICAMA,
- peanut,
- peanut butter,
- peanut sauce,
- rice noodles,
- salmon,
- TOFU,
- vermicelly
Once a month, Salad For President will be catering the staff lunch at Imprint Projects, an innovative creative agency that develops brand platforms for marketing and communications. They work as artists, designers and curators in partnership with non-profits, businesses and communities. Check out some of their work here. (Full disclosure: this is my husband’s company, and yes, I am very proud).
Once a week, this bustling crew of producers and designers stop to eat lunch together and to have a conversation about something other than their work. Such a familial gathering deserves better than tinfoil containers and plastic forks. In lieu of eating take-out, Salad For President will provide the office with a home-cooked meal and a little distraction from the maelstrom of ongoing projects — ranging from building the first skate park in the Bolivian city of La Paz, to producingMoogfest, an upcoming electronic music festival in Asheville, NC.
One of my favorite foods is a Vietnamese Summer Roll: an herbaceous salad in a rice paper wrapper — fresh, filling and pleasantly simple. I crave them daily. When I lived in L.A., this was a staple of my diet. Much to my dismay, it is really difficult to find solid Vietnamese food in New York, even in Chinatown. My main complaint is that the Summer Rolls I find here are not freshly made, and the wrappers lose their glutinous texture. I also find the dipping sauce too sweet, too soupy or with an disconcerting ”canned” flavor. Summer rolls are not fried, so they must be made just before eating, a perfect reason to tackle them in your own kitchen.
I am used to entertaining large parties in the comfort of my own home, but the challenge here was to transport the food over the Manhattan Bridge and into Chinatown. I decided I would make a pile of rolls myself, and then bring the ingredients and inspire a little team building, demonstrating the technique, and then having people teach one another. Food tastes better when it is interactive and collaborative.
This recipe was inspired (again) by Diane Morgan’s book, Roots, but I jazzed up the salmon preparation, added a heap of fresh herbs and adjusted the proportions of the sauce. I love the liberal use of cilantro, mint and basil in Vietnamese cookery, so don’t be shy, use as much herbs per roll as possible. I paired the rolls with a green mango and cabbage slaw, but those ingredients could easily be added to the rolls themselves. Just make sure you are using your trusty julienne vegetable peeler to achieve nice thin strips. No self-respecting Vietnamese chef would be caught dead without one.