Wuping Bamboo-Tray Rice Rolls 武平簸箕粄
Wuping Bamboo-Tray Rice Rolls is featured among the local specialties of Fujian.
Image notes
Resized for the web; the photo itself has not been edited.
Wuping Bamboo-Tray Rice Rolls (武平簸箕粄) are a Hakka (客家) snack of thin steamed rice sheets rolled around a savoury filling. The dish is said to have originated in Wuping County (武平县), which lies in the south-west of Fujian under the city of Longyan (龙岩), bordering Guangdong and Jiangxi.
How it is made
Rice is soaked and ground into a slurry, which is ladled into a round tray, the bòji (簸箕), about 30 centimetres across. The cook shakes the tray from side to side so the slurry spreads evenly, then puts it into the wok to steam over high heat. After about five minutes the thin steamed sheet is peeled off and a cooked filling of stir-fried minced meat, vegetables, dried shrimp and shiitake mushrooms is laid on it. The sheet is rolled into a tube and a sauce is poured over it. The filling varies a great deal from place to place and cook to cook, and differences in hand technique change the texture noticeably.
Where it comes from
Beyond Wuping, the dish is found mainly among the Hakka of western Fujian (闽西), eastern Guangdong (粤东) and southern Jiangxi (赣南). It is also written Bojiban (簸箕板), and some places call it juanban (卷粄) or longchuangban (笼床粄). Before the 1990s almost every household in most Hakka districts of western Fujian made the rolls at home.
The rolls look much like the Cantonese rice noodle roll (拉肠粉), and the two are often confused, but the method and the ingredients differ.