Kitchen Diaries: Tikoy Lumpia

My sister and I finally tried making tikoy lumpia! We usually get a box or two of tikoy during Chinese New Year and the way mom serves it is by dipping them in egg and pan frying. It's the only way I've ever eaten tikoy so when my sister told me about tikoy lumpia I really wanted to try it.

This is the second time we've made these. We only used half of the tikoy cake the first time since it yielded a lot of lumpia rolls. The first time we made the tikoy lumpia was also a big learning experience, especially for me. It was the first time I tried deep frying anything (not a fan of deep frying.) While the first batch of rolls were frying one of them popped and the oil exploded out of the pan, splashed everywhere, and hit me on the forehead. Thankfully, only a small spot on my forehead was hit and that it was the only part of me that got hit. So, what did I learn? The oil wasn't hot enough yet when I put in the first batch of rolls. I had to wait so long for them to turn even a little bit light brown and even when they did the rolls started reacting violently. Never again.

Crispy fried goodness

I fried the second batch of tikoy lumpia all by myself! My sister helped me with the rolling and the preparation, though, because I'm not very good in separating the lumpia wrappers.  We made three different variants: tikoy with cheese, tikoy with brown sugar, and plain brown sugar (because we ran out of tikoy and still had wrappers left haha.)

We used whatever cheese we had in the fridge, which was a block of Bega mild cheddar. I think something with a sharper cheese taste would be better to use for tikoy lumpia, though, because the sweetness of the tikoy might overpower the taste of the cheese.

The best way to enjoy these is to eat them while they're still warm because the wrapper is still crispy , the tikoy is still soft, the cheese a bit gooey, and the brown sugar a bit syrup-y.

Stikfas man strikes again!

Tikoy Lumpia

Tikoy

Lumpia wrapper (spring roll wrapper)

Brown sugar

Cheese (any kind of sharp cheddar recommended but not required)

Small dish of water

Cooking oil (for deep frying)

1. Fresh from the fridge, slice the tikoy into thick strips. It's better to slice the tikoy while it's still cold so it doesn't stick to your knife. Just adjust the dimensions of the strips according to the size of the lumpia wrapper you're using. I sliced our tikoy into approximately 1x1 cm strips.
2. If coming from the freezer let the lumpia wrappers thaw a bit prior to using. Keep the wrappers between damp towels so they don't dry out. If they dry out you'll have a difficult time folding and rolling your lumpia because the wrapper will be brittle and break.
3. Slice cheese to strips the same length as your tikoy. The thickness will be up to your preference on how much cheese you want to have with your tikoy.
4. Get one wrapper and lay a strip of tikoy and cheese in the upper part of the wrapper (see diagram below haha.) If using brown sugar, just sprinkle it onto the tikoy on the wrapper. Rolling the tikoy in brown sugar doesn't work well because the sugar doesn't stick.
5. Fold the upper part of the wrapper downwards (fold 1, see diagram) to cover the filling. After folding, roll downwards once and then do folds 2 and 3. Once the side flaps are folded in continue rolling downwards until the end of the wrapper.
6. Secure the end of the wrapper by dipping your finger in a small dish of water then patting it onto the end of the wrapper to make it stick to the roll (like glue.) Other people mix a bit of cornstarch with the water used to secure the end of the wrapper but plain water works fine for us.
7. Place oil in a pan deep enough to cover the lumpia. Heat over medium-high heat.
8. Wait until oil is hot enough before placing rolls in. To test if the oil is hot enough, drop a tiny bit of lumpia wrapper into the oil. If the wrapper sinks before it "bubbles" or gets fried then it's not yet hot enough. If the wrapper immediately "bubbles" and floats once it hits the oil then you're ready to fry!
9. Fry rolls in batches. Don't crowd the pan or fry too many rolls at once. It shouldn't take long for the rolls to turn light brown. When the rolls are a shade lighter than golden brown you're aiming for start removing them from the pan. They will darken a bit more even when they're out of the oil.

My sister prepared deep containers to hold the tikoy lumpia after frying. She lined them with coffee filters. If you don't have any coffee filters, paper towels should do fine. The idea is that the rolls should be standing or at least laid at an angle to let the excess oil drip off, or else you get soggy and oily rolls later.

An attempt at diagramming lumpia rolling. Dotted lines indicate creases or fold lines.

Eat while warm and enjoy!