This installment of Big Flavors from a Mystery Basket features a vibrant, Asian-inspired dish that was a big hit at the dinner table!
We’ve been having a lot of fun with the Mystery Basket meals in my house. It’s a fun way to deal with making dinner when I’m feeling uninspired, and my husband and son love trying to stump me with their ingredient selections.
This time around, my challenge was to use Mirin, rice paper, canned diagonally cut green beans and dried split red lentils.
I knew I wanted to use the rice paper to make summer rolls, and figured the lentils would be a fun substitution for the traditional rice noodles.
So I gathered up a bunch of colorful veggies from the fridge and some shrimp from the freezer and got to work!
First things first – I knew I wanted to have chilled shrimp and lentils to go inside, so I cooked those first.
I used a similar cooking method to when I made my Killer Shrimp Cocktail to add flavor to the shrimp, which worked out well.
The canned green beans were the ingredient that I found to be the trickiest, so I really wanted to step up and use them in more than one way. I can’t have the judges accusing me of taking the easy way out, right? Ha!
I used some of the liquid from the can in the vinaigrette that I tossed the cooked lentils in, and put some in the dipping sauce, along with some mashed up green beans.
It worked out surprisingly well!
I had some mini bell peppers in the fridge, and I knew that would add a great pop of color to the dish.
You can’t go wrong piling up crisp, colorful veggies in spring rolls, so I really loaded these up.
These were a big hit with my family. Colorful food just tastes better, right? And now that I’ve used lentils as summer roll filling, I think it might be fun to experiment with lots of other mix-ins!
I only made 6 of these summer rolls, but there was plenty of filling to make more. I ended up having leftovers in salad form without the rice paper wrappers, and it was really tasty!
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This installment of Big Flavors from a Mystery Basket features a vibrant, Asian-inspired dish that was a big hit at the dinner table!
Ingredients
For shrimp:
- 10 ounces large shrimp, peeled and deveined
- 1 dried bay leaf
- 1 small lemon, quartered
- 5 whole black peppercorns
- 3 cloves garlic, smashed
For lentils:
- 1 cup split red lentils
For vinaigrette:
- 1 tablespoon liquid from canned green beans
- 1 tablespoon Mirin
- 1 teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest
- 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
- 1 teaspoon tamari
- 1 teaspoon sesame oil
- 1/2 teaspoon fish sauce
For sauce:
- 2 tablespoons tablespoons canned green beans
- 2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
- 1 tablespoon liquid from canned of green beans
For rolls:
- 10 sheets rice paper
- 1 English cucumber, cut into matchsticks
- 4–6 mini bell peppers, seeded and cut into matchsticks
- 4 radishes, halved and thinly sliced
- 1 avocado, thinly sliced
Instructions
- Make shrimp: Place bay leaf, lemon, peppercorns and smashed garlic in a large stock pot and fill with water. Bring the water to a boil, and let it boil for 5 minutes, uncovered. Add shrimp to the water and cook until pink and slightly firm, about 3 minutes. Plunge the shrimp into ice water to stop the cooking. Drain shrimp and chill until ready to assemble.
- Cook lentils: Place lentils in a large saucepan along with 3 cups of water. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low and cook until tender, about 15 minutes. Add more water as needed to keep lentils covered with water while cooking.
- While lentils are cooking, make vinaigrette. In a large bowl, whisk together green bean liquid, Mirin, lemon zest and juice, tamari, sesame oil and fish sauce.
- Once the lentils are done cooking, drain well and place them in the bowl with the vinaigrette. Toss well to coat and chill until ready to assemble.
- Make sauce: Place green beans, hoisin and green bean liquid in a the bowl of a food processor and process until smooth.
- Assemble rolls: Fill a large, round shallow dish or plate with water. Submerge 1 sheet of rice paper and let it soak for about 20-30 seconds, until pliable. Remove rice paper from water and place on work surface.
- On the lower third of the wrapper, leaving an inch or two around the outer edges, lay out 3 shrimp in a horizontal line. Add some of the cucumber, bell peppers, radishes and avocado, and top with around 2 tablespoons of the seasoned lentils.
- Fold the lower piece of the rice paper up over your filling, then fold in the 2 sides and roll tightly like a burrito. There’s a good tutorial here. Place on a platter, seam-side down and repeat with remaining ingredients. Make sure that the finished summer rolls don’t touch each other on the platter, or they’ll stick together.
- Serve summer rolls with Hoisin-Bean sauce alongside for dipping.
