Southern Vietnam
Gỏi Cuốn
Rice-paper rolls of poached prawn, pork belly, vermicelli, herbs, and lettuce — Vietnam's fresh, un-fried answer to the spring roll, dipped in peanut-hoisin sauce.
Rice paper, dunked then rolled.
Vietnamese *bánh tráng* — rice paper — is sold dry and stiff. Each round is dipped briefly in warm water (3 seconds, max — over-dipped paper turns gummy) and laid on a flat surface, where it softens in another 30 seconds into a translucent, sticky wrap. Building the roll on a damp paper is the technique; on a dry paper it cracks, on an over-wet paper it tears.
4 · Plate
Southern Vietnam
Gỏi Cuốn
Rice-paper rolls of poached prawn, pork belly, vermicelli, herbs, and lettuce — Vietnam's fresh, un-fried answer to the spring roll, dipped in peanut-hoisin sauce.
The fresh cousin of the fried spring roll. Vietnamese cuisine has two parallel rolls: chả giò / nem rán (the deep-fried golden version) and gỏi cuốn (the un-fried, soft, semi-translucent version). Both use rice paper; the gỏi cuốn keeps the wrapper soft, the chả giò crisps it in oil. Most Western menus translate gỏi cuốn as “summer rolls” or “fresh spring rolls” to disambiguate; both names are widely accepted.
The dish is a study in cold-room construction. Each component is poached or pre-prepared and cooled — prawn poached and butterflied, pork belly poached and sliced, vermicelli cooked and rinsed cold, herbs washed and patted dry. The rolling is a single fast assembly: lay the wet paper, place lettuce, vermicelli, herbs, two prawn halves on top to show through the paper, fold the sides in, roll tight. No heat, no oil, no smoke. A summer dish in a southern-Vietnamese climate that makes hot cooking unwelcome.
Peanut-hoisin sauce.
The traditional dip is *tương* — a thick sauce of hoisin, peanut butter, lime, garlic, chili. Each restaurant tweaks the ratio. The lighter alternative is *nước chấm* (fish sauce + lime + sugar + chili), which is also used for fried spring rolls and bun cha. The peanut-hoisin is southern; the fish-sauce is universal.