Fresh rolls and burgers

Key elements of the all-American Memorial Day cookout. They go really well together, turns out. I'm not sure why I thought "Memorial Day cookout" and then thought "fresh rolls," but I did, so that's what I brought to my friends' cookout yesterday. I rolled vermicelli, cucumbers, carrots, green apple slices, poached shrimp, and fresh mint, basil, and shiso inside the skins. I got the idea to include green apple and shiso (also called perilla) from eating Seven Courses of Fish at Anh Hong restaurant in Dorchester, where those ingredients are part of a roll-your-own fish roll plate. The flavor combination works wonderfully. My Vietnamese cookbooks tell me to substitute green apple for green mango when the mango's not available, so maybe that's the role the green apple plays at Anh Hong, too: green mango stand-in. I made peanut sauce and nuoc cham for serving. It was a bit scary transporting the fish sauce-based nuoc cham in my car. Talk about a smell you could never get rid of!

There's something satisfying about a big ol' Tupperware full of fresh rolls.

These are a great thing to bring to a party, or to make a party of: Invite a few people over to sit around the table, roll them up, and eat them. Set out platters of cooked vermicelli, chopped vegetables, shrimp, tofu, herbs, and anything else that sounds good for people to choose from. You'll also need several large-ish bowls of hot water and round rice wrappers. Dunk one edge of the hard wrapper in the hot water, then rotate, dipping each edge until the whole skin is pliable but neither ripping nor unpalatably hard. Then put it on a plate, spread some ingredients on the bottom third of the wrapper, fold the bottom edge over them, fold the sides in, and roll like a burrito. It's actually easier than making a burrito, because the skins are sticky.

The side effect of rolling a lot of fresh rolls at once is fingers so wrinkly it looks like you just got out of the bath.