Ali Cooks: Lumpia

I'll give you a quarter if you know what the last word is in the title of this post (without cheating!).  It's pronounced:  Loom-pee-uh.  And it tastes like delicious.  

 

 

 

 

I actually didn't even look up a recipe for the ever-so-delicious, egg-roll-like Filipino food.  That's right, I have connections...connections in the form of Jenny, who totally taught the rest of us lumpia rookies how to make some darn tasty lumpia.

Nick and Sammy also joined in on the festivities, making a full team of lumpia cooks in the kitchen.  Much chaos ensued, mostly from me freaking out over the necessary hot oil for frying the lumpia.  I burned myself pretty badly, too, but that's not nearly as exciting as the food successes that resulted.

 

Oh...and did I mention that Brian helped out?  Haha, he was a trooper and even took over the frying task while I tended to my injured arm.  He had extra incentive to produce delicious food, too, because we made veggie lumpia for everyone but meat-y lumpia for him.  (And I even took a bite!  Of course I didn't like it.)

 

This is Brian.  He moves too quickly for the camera.

I couldn't honestly tell you how exactly to make the lumpia.  I can tell you in generalities, and that's all you're going to get here, because most of the process was via guestimations and approximations from Jenny and from me/Brian.  But hey, it was fun times, and we were down for the adventure!

 

For the veggie lumpia, we cut up fresh green beans and then added them to a skillet with carrots and bean sprouts.  After they softened, we added them to a bowl with julienned sweet potato.  Our veggie filling was complete!  Jenny showed us how to roll the lumpia filling after it's placed on the wrappers.  (There was a little wrapper prep that we had to do, too.)  After they all got wrapped up, we popped a few in the hot oil and let them sizzle and snap until they got golden brown and delicious.

 

 

The meat-y lumpia had a similar process except seasoned ground turkey and a strip of shrimp got placed on the lumpia wrappers as filling.  The meat-y lumpia also used half sheets of wrappers, since that's the way Jenny traditionally makes them.

 

And there you have it!  A not-so-specific way of making lumpia!  But hey, the reason I wanted to learn in the first place was because I had a Filipino babysitter when I grew up in Japan, and she made us lumpia.  Nothin like a good throwback moment to remind me of childhood!  Thanks Jenny!