Chaozhou Fried Spring Rolls 潮州春饼

How it is made

Chaozhou Daily (潮州日报) names the wrapper as the hardest part. Flour and an equal amount of water are worked into a dough, which is then dried by traditional hand technique into round, thin sheets about 22 centimetres across. At Hu Rongquan (胡荣泉), a Chaozhou snack shop founded in 1911, the filling is mung beans, the white part of garlic, shiitake mushrooms and dried shrimp, seasoned with fish sauce and MSG. One and a half wrappers are rolled around it to make a strip about 10 centimetres long, which is fried to a golden colour.

Fillings

The Guangdong Tourism Administration describes a different, more flexible filling: fresh seasonal vegetables such as green chives and Chinese celery, stir-fried with shredded pork, minced pork, chopped mushrooms and strips of tofu, with extra mushrooms or shredded chicken to taste.

Where it comes from

The provincial account links the rolls to the "spring plate" (春盘), a platter of vegetables, pancakes, fruit and sweets given to friends and relatives on the first day of spring to welcome the season, which tradition dates to the Eastern Jin dynasty about 1,600 years ago. It says the spring pancake later developed into the spring roll, with a thinner wrapper sealed and fried, and came to be eaten all year rather than only at the start of spring.

Chaozhou Daily gives the local lineage: before the Qing dynasty, street stalls in Chaozhou sold thin pancakes rolled around fried small shrimp, eaten with a sweet sauce, and the brothers Hu Rongshun (胡荣顺) and Hu Jiangquan (胡江泉), founders of Hu Rongquan, reworked that snack into today's spring roll. The shop now stands on Paifang Street (牌坊街) in Chaozhou's old town.