Chinese Spring Rolls (lumpia)

My mother in law used to freeze these spring rolls and send it down through various people when we were in Chennai. She is such an expert at making these and I had to ask her for the recipe. Its been over a year since I got the recipe, but it was just a couple of weeks back that I finally got down to making them. 

Since I decided to buy the wrapper, it wasn't that difficult at all and came in handy on those rainy evenings when you wanted to have something hot with your tea.

Thanks mama for the wonderful recipe, it definitely is a keeper.

On another note: How is my new header??? A cousin told me he didn't feel like it was a food blog and to incorporate something on to my header so I spent a whole day figuring out a photo shop like software called GIMP on my comp and this is the best I could come up with. I seriously lost it after a while and just didn't care. There are still so many options I have and it seriously requires patience to go through those numerous tutorial pages and figure out how the darn thing works. So don't be surprised if I keep playing around with the fonts and colours and header once in a while...You haven't navigated to another page or anything...just another of my antics, that's all :)

For the wrapper:

Cornflour- 1 tbsp

All purpose flour/ maida- 2 tbsp

Eggs- 4

Water- 1/4 cup

Salt- to taste

Filling:

Chicken- 1/2 cup, boiled and shredded. I used chicken breasts

Cabbage- 1 cup minced

Carrot- 1 cup grated

Celery- 1 cup minced

Onion- 1 cup

Soy sauce- 1 tbsp

Pepper powder- 1/2 tsp

Oil- 2 tbsp  + enough to fry

Getting the wrapper ready:

Beat the eggs and mix all the other ingredients into that. (Keep a wee bit aside for the egg wash)

Smear a saucepan with oil and make medium size pancakes.

For the filling:

Fry the onions in oil till translucent and then add all the vegetables, soy sauce and cover and cook for about 2 to 3 minutes.

Add salt and pepper, mix well and remove from fire. Keep aside to cool.

Assembling:

Smear the edges with some egg, put the filling in the centre, fold the sides , roll and deep fry in hot oil.

Drain on paper towels and serve with some chilli sauce.

I used store bought spring roll wrapper which was huge and square, rather than circular which the recipe would yield. I had to cut them a bit, but it still was much easier and tasted just the same. This is a pictorial representation of my hard labour. (Please ignore the shabby kitchen).

Notes: The same an be done in a veg version by avoiding the chicken. Use paneer instead.

You can freeze them in zip lock bags for as long as you want.

Baking them is a good idea, but I would have to explore that option another time

I also didn't deep fry it, but shallow fried it, and it was good enough.

Pardon the picture, I had no patience to fancy it after that laborious effort.