Lumpiang Shanghai Recipe

When it comes to spring rolls, I often had two versions. One is using vegetable and the other is minced pork. When I was a child, I used to watch my nanay (mother) while making lumpiang shanghai (the version that uses minced pork). Her amusing way of mixing every ingredient in a bowl got me curious. Then I'll help her wrapping each one of them in a lumpia wrapper bought in local wet market. The annoying part is that the wrapper was so thin that it breaks so easily. Good thing I can buy a Chinese-made wrapper here. It's reasonably thicker and even easier to use. 

My mother's magic in cooking is unbelievable because she don't use measuring devices to measure each ingredient. But her end products always taste delicious. As I intend to pass on the recipes to my kids and friends, I measured all ingredients religiously and had it written. Having said that, here's my recipe of Lumpiang Shanghai derived from my mother's own recipe. Hope you like it. 

Lumpiang Shanghai

Ingredients: 

1 kg minced (ground) pork 
2 medium sized potato 
1 large carrot 
1 red bell pepper 
2 stems of celery (or kinchay)
1 medium sized onion
3 gloves of garlic 
2 eggs
2 tbsp fish sauce
2 tsp of ground black pepper
Cooking oil 

Cooking Procedure:

1. Finely chop potato, carrot, bell pepper, celery, onion, garlic and garlic. If you have chopper or food processor, you can use it for making the task easier and faster. 
2. I always wash meat before cooking or preparing them. In this case, I washed the minced pork and drained it using a colander to ensure proper straining off liquid. (We certainly do not want to have watery mixture.)
3. In a large bowl, mix all ingredients thoroughly. 
4. Scoop 1-2 tablespoons of mixture in each spring roll wrapper (depending on the size of wrapper you have). It should be 1/2 inch thicker so it will be cooked evenly inside the wrapper. Roll them as shown in the picture above. 
5. Heat the cooking oil in a deep fryer or thick based frying pan.  Set the heat to medium before putting the rolls. Make sure that the level of the oil is enough to cover the lumpia. This is again ensure the lumpiang shanghai to be cooked evenly. 
6. Put on a plate with kitchen towel to remove excess oil.
7. Serve with sweet chilli sauce, tomato or banana ketchup. This can be served as starter or main course.