First, make the dipping sauce. Whisk together all sauce ingredients except for the hot water. Once these ingredients are incorporated, whisk in the hot water. Refrigerate until ready to use. This will help it thicken up a bit.

Heat your choice of oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Once oil is hot, add tofu. Do not stir until the side of the tofu in contact with the skillet has gotten a nice golden-brown. Once it has, stir so that all sides take on this same hue. Once tofu is golden on all sides, remove from skillet and set aside.

Organize all of your Summer Roll fillings into an assembly line of sorts. Fill a pie plate (or other vessel of similar size) with an inch or two of water. You will need this to soften up your rice paper. You will also need some counter/plastic cutting board space to assemble the rolls. I used my marble pastry slab which worked pretty well.

Place the rice paper wrappers in the dish of water one at a time. They will take about 10-15 seconds to completely soften up. Feel free to swish them around in the water as needed. Once the wrapper is soft, remove it from the water dish and place flat on your work space. Starting about one third of the way up from the bottom of the wrapper, start layering your toppings. I went in this order: cucumber, carrot, cilantro, protein (tofu or shrimp), avocado. This seemed to work fairly well.

Bring the bottom third of the rice paper up towards the filling, while sort of tucking the filling back into the paper as you roll, making it as tight as possible. Once you have the filling contained in the wrapper, fold both sides over, then continuing rolling as tight as possible. When you get to the end (which should be at the top of your work space), the rice paper should stick to itself fairly easily, but if you need to help it along just dab on a little more water with your finger.

As I said, I am far from a pro at Summer Roll wrapping, but the process did get easier as I went along. I also got a better feel for how much of each filling item to include in each roll. Practice makes perfect!