Stuff Rice Paper to Make Avocado Lox Summer Rolls

One of my favorite kitchen exercises is to take a dish from one region of the world and reimagine it as something from somewhere else on this awesomely diverse planet we live on. The rice paper wrappers used for Vietnamese summer rolls are particularly well suited for this as they make for the perfect vessel to hold just about anything you might want to fill them with.

These avocado lox summer rolls with a tangy honey mustard sauce are the sort of thing that might emerge from the kitchen if you merged a pho shop with a Jewish deli. Along with the lox and avocado, there's crisp mizuna greens and cucumbers, and instead of the usual garlic chives, mint and cilantro, I've stuffed these rolls with red onions, dill and flat-leaf parsley. The sauce still retains the sweet and sour tastes of the original, but infuses lemon peel, mustard and caraway for a delightfully bright sauce that's a perfect compliment for the fragrant herbs in the roll.

While summer rolls aren't difficult to make, the wrappers can be a little tricky to handle, so here are a few tips to help get you started. First, you want to make sure you wet the surface you're working on, otherwise the wrapper will stick like glue to a dry surface.

Second, don't over soak the wrappers. While it's tempting to soak them until they get limp, this not only makes them harder to work with, but also makes them tear more easily. The wrappers only need to be submerged in water for a few seconds (they should still be quite stiff), as they will continue to rehydrate with residual water as you add the filling. This also makes the wrappers stick together much better, allowing you to use the wrapper like a rubber band to hold everything together.

Finally, you want to layer the filling so that soft things like the salmon and avocado end up on the outside, while hard edges like the cucumbers and onions are in the center, otherwise the sharp corners will poke through the wrapper as you roll it.