Spring Rolls

Yesterday afternoon, a Vietnamese family invited us to come to their home for dinner for traditional Vietnamese spring rolls.  We thought this was a very gracious and generous offer, and we had a lovely evening with them.  The family was comprised of my sister's nail technician, M~, her brother V~, V~'s wife, D~, and their son, J~.  Also at dinner was M~'s boyfriend, who is not Vietnamese.

 

Most people probably think "spring roll" and imagine a "spring roll" from a Chinese restaurant - sort of like a smaller version of an egg roll.  But, a traditional Vietnamese spring roll is different.  Sort of like a burrito.  But cold.  With shrimp and vegetables.

 

It was a very social kind of meal.  We sat together at the table, and we dipped hard rice paper disks into bowls of warm water.  When the rice paper was soft, we put it on our plates and then put cool rice noodles, strips of cucumber, cilantro, mint, green onion, lettuce, beef and shrimp into the roll, then rolled it up, and ate it, dipping it into a garlic sauce.  It was very very good.  We have had pre-rolled Vietnamese spring rolls before, both in Vietnam and at a Vietnamese restaurant in Chicago - but, I didn't care for them on those occasions because they had been chilled and it hurt my teeth to bite into them (my teeth are really sensitive to cold) and I don't usually eat cold foods (except ice cream, which requires no biting) because I hate the way cold food makes my teeth feel.  (I even heat up milk before I put it on my cereal in the morning.  I don't like cold food is what I'm trying to say.)*  But, because we were fixing these ourselves, they were more room temperature than cold, and they were really really good.  Lana was in heaven.  She ate two whole rolls and some plain shrimp.

 

What she didn't do for most of the 3 hours we were there, was TALK.  I kept telling the family that she DOES speak Vietnamese to us all day long, but, she was not keen to speak to strangers.  Finally, towards the end of the night, she began to talk a little bit to D~, who was playing with her and D~'s 2 year old son.  Afterward, D~ told me that Lana has a strong "central" dialect in her Vietnamese, and she may not be completely understanding the southern dialect of their family.  I hope that if we visit them again she will be comfortable enough to speak more freely.  I would love to know what she is thinking of all this - her new life, etc!

 

More later,

Gretchen

 * Yes, I am aware that both my uncle and my cousin are dentists and that both are probably reading this right now and swearing at me for not asking for  help with this tooth problem.  Sorry!