Popiah

Popiah (Pe̍h-ōe-jī: pȯh-piáⁿ) is a Fujian/Chaozhou-style fresh spring roll common in Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. Popiah is often eaten in the Fujian province of China (usually in Xiamen) and its neighbouring Chaoshan (and by the Teochew and Hokkien diaspora in various regions throughout Southeast Asia) during the Qingming Festival.

In the Teochew (Chaozhou) dialect, popiah is pronounced as "Bo-BEE-a"(薄餅仔). which means "thin wafer". In variants of the Hokkien dialect, it is also commonly referred to as "lun-BEE-a"(潤餅仔), which probably explains why the spring rolls are referred to as "lumpia" in Indonesia and the Philippines. It is sometimes referred to as runbing (潤餅) or baobing (薄饼) in Mandarin, and also as bópíjuǎn (薄皮卷).

Wrapper and fillings

A popiah "skin" (薄餅皮) is a soft, thin paper-like crepe or pancake made from wheat flour. The method of producing the wrapper involves making an extremely wet and viscous dough. A ball of this dough is held to the right hand, then quickly "rubbed" (擦潤餅皮, Hokkien: chhat jūn-piáⁿ phê, lit. "to rub a lumpia crepe") against a hot steel plate in a circular fashion, and lifted. Through this process, a very thin layer of the wet dough adheres to the plate and begins to cook. The upper surface of the crepe is then usually cleaned of excess pieces of dough using the dough ball through a dabbing process. When the dough has been cooked to completion, it is peeled off of the hot steel plate before being removed. The rubbing is typically done over two or three plates at once, which allows the baker to continuously produce crepes and gives the proper time for each crepe to be properly cooked.