Seaweed Tid-bits for Chinese New Year @ 21.01.2014

New Year is around the CORNER!! My sister and Me are craving for some new year biscuit and we planned to make some of it. 

The seaweed tid-bits needs only a few things to make it happen. And the amount of the ingredients are based on your preferred. 

PS : Thanks to my sister to be the model for the steps.

SEAWEED TID-BITS

Preparing for the food

Ingredients : 

- Seaweed (Make sure that its in thin pieces and could be easily fold)
- Skin of 'Popiah'
- Egg (Mix up the egg yolk and egg white in a bowl)
- Sesame Seed (Alternative, but it would be recommended if you are not allergic to it)
- Cooking Oil

Step 1 :

Apply a little bit of the egg to the POPIAH SKIN to make it a little bit wet.
Make sure that it's not too wet as it will stick to the surface of the table.

Step 2 :

Place a piece of seaweed on top of the POPIAH skin.
Apply again some of the egg on top of the seaweed

Step 3 : 

Sprinkle a little bit of the sesame seed on top of the seaweed
(If you are allergic to sesame seed, please proceed to Step 4)

Step 4 :

Place another sheet of POPIAH skin on top of the seaweed and put some pressure on it so the skin would stick with the seaweed

Step 5 :

CHECK the angle.
If it's not sticking apply some of the egg on top of the seaweed and put some pressure on it so they could stick together

Step 6 :

At this step, you would need to make decision on how your seaweed roll will look like.
You could go for the ROLL shape or ANY shape that you like.

If you choose to go for the ROLLING shape

Step 7 :

Take a chopstick and place it at the end of the POPIAH skin. Next, start to ROLL the chopstick with the POPIAH skin to another end of the POPIAH skin.

Step 8 :

Apply some of the egg at the end of the POPIAH skin. This is to make sure that the ROLL are in place when the chopstick were pulled out.

Step 9 : 

Try to put some pressure on the ROLL so it could stick, and make sure to CHECK the ROLL before you wants to pull the chopstick out from the ROLL.

Step 10 : 

Cut the ROLL into the shape that you want, but my sister will choose to cut it in the way shown in the picture. It's because it will look prettier after you fried it.

If you are choosing to make it in OTHER shape by cutting
(Demonstration on RECTANGULAR shape)

Step 7 : 

Put aside the POPIAH skin so it could be a little bit dried out. This will leads to easier to cutting into the shape that we wanted to.

Step 8 :

After putting aside for about 2 minutes, you could cut it according to the shape that you like.
(We would go for RECTANGULAR shape)

FRYING The SEAWEED TID-BITS

Step 1 :

Half-filled the pot with cooking oil. Make sure that the oil is enough. Do not be stingy when using the oil in this dish. 

Step 2 :

Make sure the oil is hot enough. You could check the oil by putting in 1 pieces of the raw seaweed tid-bits. If the oil are making alot of the small bubble, it means that the oil is not HOT enough. Wait for the oil to be a little bit hotter and check again.

The small bubble as the outcome if the oil is not HOT enough.

DO NOT FRY YOUR FOOD IF THE OIL IS NOT HOT ENOUGH AS IT WILL ABSORB ALOT OF THE OIL AND WILL ONLY LEAD TO A GREASY FOOD TEXTURE

Step 3 :

When the oil is HOT enough, put some of the raw tid-bits into the cooking oil and fry for 10 seconds.

PS : 10 seconds is enough. A longer time will only leads the POPIAH skin to burn out. 

Step 4 :

Take out the food within 10 seconds and it will lead to a yellowish colour texture.
Do not wait until it become BROWN before you remove it from the oil.

Outcome : 

See the difference in colour for the RAW and COOKED seaweed tid-bits.
Upper left - Cooked
Lower right - Raw