Young & Hungry

If you don’t like scallops, I don’t like you.  I mean not really, but you do lose major cool points in my book of judgment and ridicule.  Scallops, although still bottom feeders, are superior to their friends The Oyster and Mr.  Muscle.  Yes, they consist mostly of an abductor muscle, which is the delicious part you eat, but I was surprised and slightly disgusted to learn that scallops also have eyes to help detect light and motion and can be hermaphrodites, consisting of both sexes at the same time or switching sexes mid-life.  Now that sounds like a crisis.  Luckily for the scallop, they are notably one of the prettier of the species, having very symmetrical shells that are musical as well as functional when on a daily swim or escaping predators on the prowl. 

 

Outside of the physical realm, scallops are associated with Saint James and fertility.  Going forward one might take special consideration of the occasion for which they are making scallops, being the apparent symbol of fruitfulness that they are.  Perhaps had I paid more attention to mythology or art in my time abroad I would have remembered that in The Birth of Venus, the Roman Goddess of fertility and love, was in fact on a lovely half-shell or scallop shell.  Upon further investigation one learns that the Greek Goddess Aphrodite was also carried to Earth in the shell of a scallop thus earning the scallop its reputation as an aphrodisiac. 

 
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Dylan Thomas wrote “Do not go gentle into that good night”; I have the same advice for the crafting of Vietnamese Summer Rolls.  There will inevitably come a point when you will realize that you are in way over your head, that these cousins of the more familiar spring rolls are not, in fact, as simple as they first appeared, that you do not have the patience or dexterity required to work with such delicate ingredients.  My friends…you must fight the urge to quit!  I tried the recipe first for a reason, so I can relay my findings, and so that you can learn from them and have a head start on what I admit to be a trying process.

 

Summer rolls became an addiction of mine while I was working in Hawaii and making daily jaunts down Fort Street, dodging the radom showers, and sampling the rolls at each and every restaurant.  There were tofu rolls, shrimp rolls, tuna salad rolls, veggie rolls, pork rolls; you name it, someone on that street made it.  In retrospect, I think that the making of these rolls might be better left to the specialists.  In the same way that true Italians make better biscotti, I’m pretty sure that the Vietnamese make better rolls.  That said, if you have the time and patience, these are pretty good.

 
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