ngoh hiang or five-spice roll
i woke up this morning feeling a wee bit adventurous.
well, I haven’t really meal planned for weeks, and Donald has decided that he will be back on his chicken breast and veggies diet in an attempt to fit into the work shirts that he can no longer fit into. So, why not make something that both Ollie and I enjoy?
I have been wanting to make ngoh hiang for a while, the way that my grandma makes. As it is with allllll grandmas around the world I believe, our grandmas do not believe in precise measures and work with a little of this, and a pinch of that. I remembered asking her the ingredients to making these rolls and I vaguely remembered the ingredients to it. A quick check on the internet confirmed some of the ingredients. But I thought I’d better give her a call to confirm the seasoning for the rolls.
Ingredients
500g minced pork (don’t ask for lean as you will need the fatty bits to keep the meat moist)
200g prawns, minced (I used crystal prawns / 水晶虾)
1 carrot, grated
3 – 4 pcs water chestnut. diced into tiny pieces
1 packet of cream crackers
1 egg
1.5 tsp 5-spice powder
1 tsp ground white pepper
1 tsp light soy sauce
1 sheet of soy bean curd skin
When in Rome, do as the Romans do. So when you want grandma-esque 5-spice rolls, you do it the grandma way. I thought I might give it a shot. Haha. So off I went mincing the prawns the old fashioned way, using the cleaver; dicing it into smaller pieces before mincing it away. Tok tok tok tok tok. I have to say, it definitely looks different to how it would have turned out if I had used the food processor; it would have just been blitzed into a paste, whereas mincing it with the cleaver still gives it somewhat a bit of a shape, a bite?, not so pasty. I also gave the minced pork another mincing using the cleaver as well, so I wouldn’t get the meat still in little balls, but slightly more pasty.
Tossed everything in, lined the meat mixon the cleaned soy bean curd skin and rolled it outwards in one roll. Ideally, it should only have one layer of the bean curd skin so it doesn’t get too thick. Grandma mentioned that I didn’t have to worry about gluing the sides and edges together and to just deep fry it like this. Cool, that’d save me a step.
Now, I had previously seen Grandma steaming the rolls before deep-frying them. However, she told me to just go ahead and fry the rolls. So I decided to give it a shot both ways. I found that steaming the rolls before deep-frying them meant that the bean curd skin would be more tightly wrapped around the meat mix (kinda like shrink wrapped), whereas immediately deep-frying them gave them little air pockets and the rolls would break easily where the air pockets were. They both tasted the same, but I reckoned steaming them made their skin crispier too. Hmm..
Chances are that I would probably give steaming them a miss unless I was making A LOT of rolls. Waay too much appliances being used for this dish. Haha (Yes..I am lazy about washing up too.).
Verdict: Donald gave the thumbs up, Ollie likes it too, so I reckon this would be something regular..only after a staycation or when I am feeling adventurous hahaha
