Vietnamese Summer Roll Salad

Emily Nunn runs the “Department of Salad”. I received her email with the recipe for Summer Roll in a Salad Costume this morning and I was sold by the name alone. Miraculously I had almost all the ingredients at home already and I popped by the grocery store to pick up some already cooked shrimp. Emily Nunn is big on “lettuce care” swishing the leaves in multiple rinses of cold water and then spinning them dry in a salad spinner. Since this is a salad and there is no cooking, each ingredient really has to “bring it.”

You will need

1) Amazing crisp crunchy fresh lettuce = I like the 4 pack of little gems at QFC and Fred Meyer. A long time ago, Costco sold an artisan lettuce clamshell that included little gems but I haven’t seen them there in a while. I pick the leaves, wash and dry them and then wrap them in kitchen towels to crisp up in the fridge. If you can’t find little gems then super good looking romaine would work. You want crunchy and some bowl like integrity of the leaf.

2) Dead ripe avocado = I only buy avocados from Mexico, I only buy from Costco when they are hard as rocks and then I leave them on the kitchen counter and do not touch them for 4 days (7+ days if the counter is at my lab where it is the same temperature as the barrel cellar = so cold).

3) Fresh herbs = today I used a mix of Thai basil and mint and the dregs of a bunch of cilantro I bought last week, maybe my salad would have been better with even more cilantro?

4) MSG peanuts from China - these Spicy Peanuts are the best - I don’t love biting down on the whole Szechuan peppercorns so for this salad I picked those out, but the nuts are gigantic, so crunchy and are coated with monosodium glutamate and salt, they are the greatest. Uwajimaya sells them but they are also on Amazon. Emily Nunn’s recipe calls for cashews but I like peanuts with these Vietnamese flavors.

5) Red Boat Fish Sauce - Trader Joe’s sells it now you guys

6) Pro Tip -rinse your shallot or red onion so it’s less oniony

Full disclosure I did not use mango in my salad because I didn’t have any and I didn’t put as much sugar in as she indicates in the Spicy Nuoc Cham dressing recipe. You have to really like Vietnamese fish sauce flavors to dig this. Thankfully I do really like Vietnamese fish sauce flavors and I had one of my new chenins waiting in the fridge, chilled and ready to go. What a great pairing. Bon Appetit, Emily Nunn.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/22/dining/emily-nunn-salad-substack.html