Sunday, November 2, 2008

popiah party
ivy and ida,

auntie helen and uncle victor samuel joined us for a popiah lunch/party today. in spite of our bad experience with hup kiat at havelock food centre, your mother still went there to buy the plain popiah skin from the stall as she was on her way for a medical appointment at singapore general hospital.

for the main filling, we used shredded strips of turnip, carrot and french bean. the shredded stuff was first sauteed, before being transferred into a slow-cooker and stewed for many hours. the rest of the filling included bean sprouts, thinly sliced chinese sausages, prawns, groundnuts and lettuce. we spread sweet sauce and ground chilli on the skin, to form the base.

your mother bought one kati (less than a kilogram; 0.625kg) of plain popiah skin for $10.60 from the stall. another place we go to for popiah skin is kway guan huat at 95 joo chiat road. yet another place where we sometimes go to get the skin is at jalan satu, near to the kallang old airport food centre.

to make our own popiah, we first spread the sweet sauce and chilli paste to form the base. next, we layer it with lettuce before putting the filling, followed by the rest of the ingredients - prawns, sausages, bean sprouts and the groundnuts bits.

we start by folding the two sides and then the side nearer to you. roll it and tuck the rest in neatly into a tight and compact wrap.

anyway, there is more than one way to wrap a popiah. the important thing is not to squeeze too much into it otherwise the skin may burst. some people place the lettuce leaf right at the base and the spread the chilli and sweet sauce on the leaf. the rest of the ingredients then follow.

6 comments:

Philip Chew said...

to prevent the poh piah skin from bursting, the liquid in the filling must be removed as much as possible from the filling.

there is also the hokkien poh piah where black mushroom and other ingredients are added.

Anonymous said...

why did you have a bad experience with hup kiat? can you save some popiah for me?

yg said...

mr chew, my wife is hokkien. she says her popiah is the hokkien version. sometimes, she includes tow kwa and bits of salted fish. i am also hokkien, and i learnt to make popiahs from her.

yg said...

ida, one chinese new year's eve, we wanted to have popiah but this stall refused to sell us just 10 pieces of the skin because we did not order in advance.

Lam Chun See said...

Mmmmm .... looks real yummy.

Anonymous said...

yg, the next time you have a popiah party, I recommend that you include kueh pie tee. Afterall, the ingredients used for the popiah can be used to fill in the kueh pie tee cups. You can buy cheap, excellent kpt cups from www.redlipsfoods.com