Milk-Friendly: Mango Summer Roll Recipe with Guava Dipping Sauce

There's that time of the day, when all I crave is something fresh and yummy, and now that we're living here on the North Shore, my mind always wanders to the plentiful food options we had in San Diego. One of those places was this tiny little Vietnamese/Chinese/Thai place in Encinitas that has the best Pho. MMM... Pho. But that's not what I am here to share today...because I have no Pho skills at this point in my life. What I do want to share is my Mango Summer Roll Recipe. It's easy, has mango (duh, so good) and you don't have to "cook" anything.

Ingredients:

1 ripe mango
Fresh mint leaves
Fresh basil leaves
A few carrots
A cucumber
Rice Paper (see image below)
Bean thread noodle things
Sesame oil
Lime juice
(You can also add cooked chicken, shrimp or tofu if you want a little more oomph)

Dipping Sauce:

Store bought sweet and sour sauce (but if you are even cooler, make your own)
Guava jam (very abundant here in Hawaii, but would be good with maybe plum jam, if there is such a thing, or possibly some strawberry jam.)

1. Get the hot water running, and when it's real hot, just fill up a bowl.

2. Put a bunch of the bean noodles in the hot water because they will need to soak for a while.

3. Now it's chopping time. Julienne your cucumber, carrots and mango. Also, tear apart the mint and basil leaves to set aside.

4. Now grab another bowl, put the cucumber, carrots and pre-soaked noodles in there. Put about 1 tablespoon-ish of sesame oil and about 1 teaspoon of lime juice in there with the cucumber, carrots and noodles. Give them a little stir and let them marinate a bit while you make the dipping sauce.

5. Grab another dipping size bowl, and add about a tablespoon of the sweet and sour sauce and a tablespoon of the jam of your choice. Then mix mix mix.

6. Now it's time to grab a big shallow bowl that you can soak the rice paper in and a plate that you'll be rolling these puppies on. Get the hot water running again and when it's HAWT, give the paper a good dipping for about 10 seconds.

7. Lay the soaked rice paper on the plate so when you're looking at it, it's a diamond instead of a square. Add a bit of all the ingredients in the center of the paper (maybe a little lower than the very center, toward your body) and roll it up burrito style. In my mind, burrito style means fold that bottom corner up over the ingredients, give it one roll, then fold in the right and left corners and roll all the way up to the top corner.