This is one dish that fascinates me. Cause I love the skin. My family used to laugh at me, cause everyone wants popiah with paper-thin skin, stuffed to bursting with filing. But I like the skin. Good skin is sketchy, slightly crisp, yet soft, with the wonderful aroma of wheat flour. It is the thin, sketchy nature of the skin that allows it to hold so much filling. However, I used to deliberately understuff my popiah, or use two layers of skin. Laugh on, nevermind! I like it!
I got hold of some lovely popiah skin lately, and of course I have to get some turnip and make a good filing! One issue with this style of popiah is the wetness of the turnip filing. It causes the skin to get soggy and split, and there is nothing sadder then a soggy, split popiah. You can still stuff it into your mouth, but its no longer a popiah.
I was thinking about this, how to stop the skin from getting soggy. I was also thinking about how I want to do the egg. Some love the eggs hard boiled, sliced or chopped. Others like it fried into an omelette, really thin, and sliced into ribbons.
Then, I asked, why slice the omelette into ribbons at all? Why not use a large sheet of omelette as part of the wrapper? As the barrier between the soggy filling and the delicate skin? If If I made the omelette as a large sheet, about the size of the skin, and laid it down over the popiah skin…… I was asking two questions, and I got an answer that answered the two questions at the same time!
So, this, is my new found way to wrap a popiah :
- Make large, thin omelettes sheets, about the size of the skin.
- Use two skins, lay them down, overlapping a bit in the center, like a Venn diagram. (Many of the popiah stalls do this.)
- Lay an omelette sheet in the center, covering the overlap region of the skins.
- Lay the filling on the omelette, keeping it within the circle of the omelette
- Wrap! Fold the edges of the popiah skin right up the edge of the omelette. Roll tight.
- Eat!
Yay! In the cross section here, you can see the egg as a layer just under the skin.
I ike it:). I like my cooking!