Belated Filipino Food Post: Lumpiang Shanghai Post Ending with a Mel Vera Cruz Image

It had been literally forever since I have made lumpia, and I mean literally because I have never singlehandedly made lumpia. “Making” lumpia means preparing all the ingredients, combining all the ingredients into a mixture, separating the wrappers/skins (they all come stuck together in a package if you are like most of us and buy the Menlo brand of wrappers in the red square plastic package rather than make them yourself), and then wrapping each and every single lumpia.

I have participated in the assembly line that was comprised of me, my older sister, my mom, and my Mama, who would assign each of us a specific task: chopping the water chestnuts and scallions, peeling and grating the carrots, cutting the square wrappers into two isosceles right triangles and then separating them. When I got older, I would actually be allowed to do the actual wrapping; it was like graduating.

My mom and Mama taught me to use the meat (ground pork) filling sparingly, spooning out and shaping a narrow, maybe 2.5 to 3 inch line of it along the edge of the longest side (actually about 0.5 inches away from and parallel to the edge), fold the left and right corners in, and from that now flat end, rolling it up until the pointy end of the wrapper wrapped itself around the lumpia. This is like making an envelope, kind of. We would keep little shallow bowls of water handy to make sure the filling didn’t stick to our fingers, and then to make sure the pointy end of the wrapper stuck itself to the lumpia’s body.

I am told that rolling lumpia is like rolling a J, but even though I really (really!) don’t know how to roll a J, I can hella roll lumpia. We would roll what felt like hundreds of these identically sized lumpia at a time, fry them up the same or next day for family gatherings, and freeze the rest raw. Needless to say making lumpia is labor intensive, hence it has never been a solitary endeavor in my family. These days, my mom buys Shanghai lumpia from a caterer.

One Thanksgiving a couple of years ago up in Quilcene, WA, we helped my older sister with lumpia wrapping, and I was in charge of teaching her white sister-in-law how to wrap lumpia properly. Thinking the more meat, the better and yummier the lumpia, she couldn’t get the concept of less is more, for the more meat you add, the more fat, lumpy, and unattractive the lumpia. Most importantly, the less evenly it cooks as well, the more prone to breakage while cooking. You end up with a raw meat middle, and in addition to this being totally un-fun, my Mama would tsk-tsk at you from beyond for not doing it properly.

My Shanghai lumpia from a few weeks ago, of course, comes with some health conscious substitutions: rather than ground pork, I use ground chicken, shiitake mushrooms from a vendor at Grand Lake Farmers Market, and minced shrimp meat (I don’t think it matters here too much what kind of shrimp you use). Of course I also use scallions, carrots, water chestnuts, and maybe half of a medium sized yellow onion but now I don’t remember, all finely chopped, and then fresh coarse ground black pepper, oyster sauce, and an egg white as the filling’s binder.

As for lumpia wrapping, again, the Menlo brand, but instead of cutting into isosceles right triangles, I use the entire sheet, spooning and shaping a thin line of filling all the way along the bottom edge, then starting from that flat bottom edge, rolling the entire thing into one long thin lumpia. Afterwards, I cut each long thin lumpia into thirds.

Shallow frying is something that always gets me burned, so as the sole maker of the lumpia, I am exempt from cooking the lumpia. Again with the less is more in the pan. Also, invest in a splatter screen! The lumpia is fried until it’s darker than golden brown and even colored all around. Some good dipping sauces can include plum sauce (I use Lee Kum Kee for its sheer availability), Jufran hot banana ketchup, or Mae Ploy sweet chili sauce. If you are one of those make your own sweet and sour sauce kind of people, then God loves you. Do that. I am not a fan of (American? Western?) ketchup on lumpia, though some people do this. I am a fan of Jufran (son of Mafran?), so in honor of some good banana ketchup, how’s about some Mel Vera Cruz artwork (see above).

There is still a bag of lumpia in our freezer just waiting for an occasion to be fried.

Addendum: Fish is also a good variation on the meat filling. If you can get de-boned bangus, or if you enjoy de-boning such a super bony fish (its bones have bones, for cryin’ out loud) I think that would be great.