Popiah

My Favourite Food <(^-^)>

Popiah

Popiah is a Fujian/Chaozhou-style fresh spring roll common in Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.

 
 Popiah is often eaten in the Fujian province of China (usually in Xiamen) and its neighbouring Chaoshan on the Qingming Festival.

 
In the Teochew (Chaozhou) dialect, popiah is pronounced as "Bo-BEE-a". which means "thin wafer".

 
 In variants of the Hokkien dialect, it is also commonly referred to as "lun-BEE-a", which probably explains why the spring rolls are referred to as "lumpia" in Indonesia and the Philippines.

 
 It is sometimes referred to as runbing or baobing in Mandarin, and also as bópíjuǎn. "Popiah" entered the English language from Malay by 1986.


A popiah "skin" is a soft, thin paper-like crepe or pancake made from wheat flour. The method of producing the wrapper involves making an extremely wet and viscous dough. A ball of this dough is held to the right hand, then quickly "rubbed", Hokkien: chhat jūn-piáⁿ phê, lit. "to rub a lumpia crepe") against a hot steel plate in a circular fashion, and lifted. Through this process, a very thin layer of the wet dough adheres to the plate and begins to cook.
 
 
The upper surface of the crepe is then usually cleaned of excess pieces of dough using the dough ball through a dabbing process. When the dough has been cooked to completion, it is peeled off of the hot steel plate before being removed. The rubbing is typically done over two or three plates at once, which allows the baker to continuously produce crepes and gives the proper time for each crepe to be properly cooked.

 

Sometimes lauded as the Asian burrito, this healthy snack is like a Chinese spring roll that’s not deep-fried. The name popiah refers to the soft, paper-thin skin made from wheat or rice flour. It’s smeared with a sweet sauce, chili sauce, minced garlic and is used to wrap ingredients like braised turnip or bangkuang (jicama), carrots, bean sprouts, Chinese sausage, shredded omelette, crushed peanuts and even shrimp or crab meat.

 
 In mainland China, Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan there are "popiah parties" at home, where the ingredients are laid out and guests make their own popiah with proportions ingredients to their own personal liking which can prove to be the best entertainment at times.