Shiitake Mushroom Rice Paper Rolls, Leftover Limed Golden Beets

As I described last June, my blogger friend Puja had so kindly sent me Vietnamese rice paper (banh tranh) rolls. She loves them and I should experiment more with them. They keep well and today I used them again in an idea that I came up with. We ran out of time to go grocery shopping but had some tasty looking shiitake mushrooms.

I sauteed the mushrooms and a little bit of onion in tangerine olive oil for a few minutes till the mushroom was cooked, then mixed in a little salt and black pepper, as well as some New Mexican chile sauce (I wish I had either time to make some peanut satay sauce or that had some on hand, but since neither was true, I would have no dipping sauce and tried to jazz up the mushrooms). I took out six (three for my wife and three for me) rice paper sheets and kept the filling - these mushrooms as well as some rice noodles that I had briefly boiled till cooked, then drained - handy.

I took the rice paper discs in turn and put each in a shallow plate of hot tap water just 5-10 seconds or so, till just pliable, then added the mushroom mixture and noodles and folded into a roll. I served them with leftover beets from a few days ago and corn-off-the-cob.

I enjoyed the meal, but my wife found the rolls too bland and actually had some ketchup with them when she didn't like some seasoning that I offered. I definitely want to return to the rice paper again in the near future, using some of my ideas from last June, such as avocado, as filling.