Lumpia Shanghai

Above are the components for a popular Filipino bite.  Minus the canned soy milk. That's just there because I wanted to drink it.  Other than that, we have a meat mixture, spring roll wrappers and some egg wash.

There are two dishes that most non-Filipinos know when it comes to Filipino food.  One is adobo.  It's hailed as the national dish of the Philippines.  The other is lumpia shanghai.  The name tells you straight off that it is an imported food.  Very common item among asian cuisines, fried eggrolls, so not surprising it's a known favorite among Filipino food as well.  Lumpia shanghai is a long, cigar-sized egg roll, its skin tightly layered, thin and crispy.  It's fried.  And as we all know, everything fried tends towards tasty good.

The meat mixture is pretty simple.  You've got finely chopped onions, carrots, and garlic.  Season it with salt and pepper.  Mix that all up with the ground meat which can vary.  Ideally, I like to put a combination of ground pork and shrimp.  I love it with shrimp and may just go ahead and use it next time.  Several reasons prevented me from using it this time around, one of those being expense.  So this verion is just pork.  But pork alone works just fine.  My advice though, if you are using only pork, is to make sure you purchase some pork with a decent amount of fat in the mix.  The pork I used this time around was actually not very fatty at all, so the texture was a little drier than I had hoped.  Not bad, just not as juicy and textural as I like my lumpia filling.

Wrapping into a roll is pretty simple too.  The one thing that perhaps is the most difficult is deciding how much meat to actually put in each roll.  Somewhere around 3-4 tablespoons is what I put.  I've decided it's actually a little too much.  A little meat goes a long way in these little cigar shaped rolls so once again, next time I'll use a little less.  And I'm not even going ot bother telling you how to wrap it, I'm just going to show you.

The wrapper itself, you can find at most asian grocery stores.  Take note that not all spring roll wrappers are alike.  Each one, after frying will be different.  Some end up smooth, some with a more bubbly texture.  Thicker, thinner.  Some brown very dark, others not so much.  They all work.  Just experiment and find the one with the texture you like.  The Spring Home brand I used this time around ends up smooth, thin and golden when fried.