Five Spice Rolls (Ngoh Hiang)

Five Spice Rolls (五香卷)

This is a Hokkien dish. I heard from my mom that when she was young, during the Lunar New Year, my maternal grandmother would prepare five spice rolls. She did not cut the bean curd skin into small square pieces like what I have been doing. She would cut the skin into long rectangular pieces and then roll them up with pork fillings. My mother will cut the skin into small square pieces. I’m doing what my mother has been doing.

Every Lunar New Year, she will also prepare five spice rolls. Our family loves this dish as my mother only prepares it once a year because she really puts in a lot of effort to cook this dish. She will buy 1 kg of pork belly, have its skin removed by the butcher and then she will painstakingly cut it up manually into small pieces. According to her, this will ensure that we can ‘feel’ the meat pieces when we bite into the rolls. I can tell you it’s no joke cutting the pork belly like that because I’ve done it myself and the fatty parts are rather ’slippery’. You need to have a very sharp knife. My fingers ache ‘like mad’ after cutting it into pieces. Now, I just buy the mince pork meat. However, no pain no gain, the rolls that my mom makes have better textures (口感) than mine. You can really see the pork meat and the prawn meat (which my mom also cuts up into small pieces rather than mincing them) after you cut up the rolls into bite-sized pieces. After steaming the rolls, the exterior will become slightly pinkish because of the prawn meat.

My recipe for the five spice rolls is as follows:-

INGREDIENTS:-

300 g minced pork meat

300 g prawns, shelled and diced

3 water chestnuts, diced finely

1 medium onion, minced

1 packet spring onion (buy from NTUC), chopped

1 egg

1 tbsp cornflour

2 tbsp plain flour

1 tsp salt

½ tbsp five spice powder

1 packet of beancurd skin

Method:-

1. Combine all the ingredients except the beancurd skin.

2. Cut the beancurd skin into half and then half them again and half… and so on until you get a small rectangle (about 5″ x 4″).

3. Wide the beancurd skin with a damp cloth to remove dirt and some of the saltiness. Spoon a tablespoon of the meat mixture onto the skin and roll up. Fold the two sides in first and then roll it up like a spring roll.

4. Steam them for 15 minutes. Remove and let cool. You can store them in plastic bags and keep them in the freezer until you need to deep fry them.