Saturday, March 24, 2007


Fresh Springroll doesn't seem to be a traditional dish, or maybe it's not so popular in Hanoi, that I often found Fresh Springroll in the menu of restaurants, even a fancy one, rather than in the market or on the pavement.
One said, Fresh Springroll is a everyday snack in Ho Chi Minh city that you can find it everywhere, in a small market, in a small street vendor.
It is wrapped by the rice wrapper, a little more chewy than the one we often use for regular springroll. Inside is shrimp (carefully placed so that you can see the red shrimp through the wrap), pork, vegetable. The thing that looks like spring onion is hẹ, sticking out of the roll.
The art of eating Fresh Springroll is in the dipping sauce. In restaurants in Hanoi, they use Tương bần (peanut sauce), with smashed peanut, and chilly is added but not mixed. I've never tried this dish in Ho chi Minh city, so I don't know what sauce they use. Maybe some chilly sauce with peanuts on top?
Fresh Springroll is also a famous appetizer in every Vietnamese restaurants in the US. And it is also one of my most favourite snack.
There is another version of Fresh Springroll that we often make at home. There is pork, fried egg, vegetable, shrimp and rice noodle inside, and wrapped by the rice wrapper, dip in fish sauce mixed with a little bit of garlic, vinegar and sugar. Maybe this is the Hanoian version of Fresh Springroll.