D.C. is hot. Hot and humid (for the record, it is definitely both the heat and the humidity). Cooking is not that fun when you could accidentally touch a hot stove and barely notice. So I've been doing a lot of green salads, grain and bean salads, and things like salad rolls that are mostly raw, can be made ahead, and are made to eat cold.
Here are my tips on good salad rolls:
1) Pass on the cilantro. It's a vile weed that takes up space where basil is meant to be. Leave it for its best and highest use, which is soil remediation, because it takes up arsenic. Yeah, think about *that* for a minute.
2) Season your vegetables. I shred cabbage with carrots and season them with sesame oil, rice vinegar, soy sauce, and a little garlic. Sometimes I add finely chopped scallions, and sometimes I cut those in thin strips and add them separately for more color.
3) Make them pretty. I use purple cabbage and make sure to add some green stuff - basil, scallions, and sometimes spinach as well. Shred them finely or else the whole thing will look messy.
4) Have a good vegetable/noodle ratio. A lot of salad rolls just taste like rice noodles inside of rice paper. I mean, I like peanut sauce a lot, even on a sub-par vehicle, but we can all do better than that. That said, the noodles help keep everything from falling all over the place, so don't expect them to hold together if there aren't enough noodles. Along those lines, don't overfill them or they'll be a mess to eat and won't stay rolled up.
5) Some kind of sauce is obviously important. I prefer peanut, and use peanut butter, ginger, garlic, sesame oil, lime juice, coconut milk, and a little chile oil. But there are really good vinegar/chili sauce recipes out there if that's your thing.
6) Saute your tofu with a little soy sauce, even if it's hot out and you don't feel like it. It adds flavor and texture. Or use seitan. Just put something in that adds a little more substance.
