Vietnamese spring rolls

You can get tasty spring rolls similar to these (also often, perhaps more authentically, called summer or salad rolls) at any Vietnamese restaurant, but these are actually my favorite. Standard rolls contain shrimp and/or pork, and in those, the pork and shrimp provide much of the flavor of the roll until the dipping sauce comes into play. Although my fondness for shrimp knows no bounds, the recipe I use to make these spring rolls calls for no meat or shrimp, and the absence means that the herbs -- scallions, cilantro, mint, and thai basil--get top billing. The flavor combination of the green onions and herbs, some bean thread noodles mixed with a little rice vinegar, and peanuts, lettuce and carrots for texture and crunch, eaten with a slightly sweet and spicy peanut dipping sauce is simply incredible. Naturally, using super fresh herbs is a must.

I have been wondering if the Vietnamese restaurants who deal with these herbs in bulk quantities have secret ways to deal with all of these delicious fresh ingredients. As someone who cooks/preps rather slowly, I find the process of making these rolls to be, although it's worth it, pretty labor intensive--washing and drying the herbs, picking them off the stems, and dealing with the rice paper sheets is quite an undertaking. I can't even imagine making these in larger quantities. I appreciate ordering spring rolls in restaurants all the more now and it's always worth it to me to buy them, although I've yet to find spring rolls like these, where the emphasis is on the herbs more than on a protein.

A great way to get the same flavors with a lot less work is to create what I like to call "deconstructed" spring rolls--just eliminate the rice paper wrapper, mix a little bit of extra rice vinegar in with some soaked noodles, shred the lettuce, and mix everything in a bowl with some of the peanut dipping sauce drizzled on top.