I absolutely love Vietnamese spring rolls but have always found the tofu type to be a little bland, therefore I decided to try it with mushrooms. My only complaint about the final outcome was that I didn’t use enough mushrooms! I didn’t add any rice vermicelli because I wanted to eat these in a hurry, but a little rice vermicelli would be good inside as well. For the dipping sauce, I replaced the traditional fish sauce with maggi, which you can get in any Asian market and I think most grocery stores. It is a sauce used widely in Europe and Southeast Asia. Another thing that I think would have been great in these is some pickled carrots and cucumber, but I never thought about it at the time. I was hungry!

I only made 4 of these vegetarian Vietnamese mushroom spring rolls and ate all the sauce, but I’m sure there is enough sauce for quite a few more rolls! I have been known to eat every bit of sauce I get with anything, drinking it if I have to :-). There is nothing like sauce! Years ago, I had a sauce party where everyone had to bring a sauce, and something to dip in it, but the dipper was really not the focus!

Dipping Sauce
1 tablespoon peanut butter
1 tablespoon hoisin sauce
1 tablespoon sambel oelek (or fresh minced red chilis)
1 tablespoon maggi dipping sauce (you could also use soy sauce, but I like maggi better)
1 teaspoon palm sugar (or brown sugar)
Squeeze of lime

1. Mix all the ingredients well.

The Rolls
(base the amounts on how many rolls you would like to make)
White or crimini mushrooms sliced (I suppose any mushroom would be good!)
Fresh basil (Thai if you have it, I only had Italian)
Fresh Mint
Fresh Cilantro
Rice paper sheets
Dipping Sauce

1. Saute mushrooms spread out in pan to keep them from steaming. Flip and add salt near the end of cooking, again so they don’t steam.
2. Chop your fresh herbs.
3. Right before rolling, run a rice paper sheet under luke warm water, shake the excess water off and lay on a plate.
4. Add the basil, mint and cilantro to the middle of the soaked rice paper.
5. Top with mushrooms.
6. Roll up like a little burrito and serve with the dipping sauce!