Lesley Tan-Rice digs deep on the fried local spring roll called ngohiong. Mention the word and it instantly and uniquely evokes school memories for most Cebuanos.

ONE OF THE CORNERSTONES OF Asian cuisine is the spring roll. It’s been called many different names: spring rolls or summer rolls; lumpia, popiah, poh pia sod or bò bía; ngohiong or ngoh hiang, goi cuon, cha gio. What unifies all the regional variations is the paper-like wrapper and crunchy meat and vegetable filling.

Growing up in Cebu, ngohiong was as ubiquitous as lechon and pusô. I wasn’t allowed to queue at streetside stalls as a kid, but there was always a regular delivery of these crispy rolls wrapped in brown paper bags which were stained with cooking oil. On bucolic afternoons, I was gobbling roll after roll like a squirrel stuffing acorn in its mouth.

It starts with the crunch, as soon as teeth makes contact with the deep-fried, battered wrapper, oozing out a mixture of ground pork, minced shrimp, jicama, bamboo shoots, garlic, onions and five-spice powder. Then dip the fried roll in thick sweet-spicy-starchy sauce.

Salivating yet? Let’s dig deeper into the origins of the spring roll and its offshoots from neighboring countries. I always thought ngohiong was a Cebuano specialty until I discovered ngoh hiang in Singapore was completely different in texture and taste, more akin to the Tagalog kikiam. So if kikiam is like ngoh hiang, then why is it called kikiam and not the original ngoh hiang? And why is the Cebuano ngohiong, which is actually more similar to fried lumpia or popiah, called ngohiong? Is it because some enterprising Cebuano in the past decided to mix five-spice together with the usual lumpia filling, fried it to a crisp, sold it and made it a street food staple?

Information on ngohiong’s specific beginnings in Cebu is scant, apart from the documented fact that ngohiong sprang from Chinese influence, particularly Hokkien traders who settled in the country from Fujian province and introduced various ingredients, dishes, and methods of cooking. These were then nativized to become part of Filipino culinary heritage.

Since the common word that ties in and traces back most of the Philippine spinoffs of the spring roll is lumpia, it was time to brush up my ancestral dialect and map out the context clues to understand the meaning behind each word. 

FRESH

Lumpia literally means moist pastry, from the root words lum/lun meaning “moist” or “soft,” and pia meaning “cake” or “pastry.” It is also known as “popiah” in the Fujian and Chaoshan provinces of China, as well as in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei. The Philippines and Indonesia use the term “lumpia.”

Like the Philippines, Indonesian lumpia has numerous varieties and is likewise a popular street food snack. In the Netherlands, where there is a diaspora of Indonesians who moved to their former colonists’ country, lumpia is spelled loempia, and has become the generic name for spring roll in Dutch. Both Philippine and Indonesian lumpia have similar ingredients, except for pork, as is expected for Indonesia, being a predominantly Muslim country. Lumpia basah (wet spring roll) in Indonesia is the equivalent of our lumpiang sariwa or lumpia ubod; all three are derived from the original Chinese popiah.

The ingredients for both lumpia basah and lumpiang sariwa consists of shredded bamboo shoots or heart of palm, bean sprouts, jicama, garlic, shallots, pepper and sweet soy sauce, sometimes with grated carrots and/or tofu cubes, rolled in lettuce leaf on top of a viscous crepe, with egg used as a binder for the wrap.

Accompanying the fresh bouncy rolls are bowls of ground peanuts and sugar (similar to the Taiwanese preparation), and a sweet and spicy thick peanut sauce. In Indonesia, lumpia basah is usually served with tao co (a kind of soybean sauce) with bird’s eye chili.

In Taiwan, popiah or lumpia is called runbing, and the stuffing also varies between north and south. Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei retained the term “popiah.”

In Thailand, popiah is known as poh pia sot (fresh spring roll). In Myanmar, it is called kawpyan.

Vietnam also has a version called bò bía, the noticeable difference is the use of rice paper wrapper, giving it a similar translucence as goi cuon. The Vietnamese version also uses sliced Chinese sausages in the filling. 

FRIED

The Cebuano snack staple ngohiong means five-spice powder, as in the mix of cinnamon, star anise, fennel seeds, cloves, and the fifth ingredient being either Sichuan pepper, black pepper, white pepper or ginger powder.

Elsewhere in the Philippines, it is called lumpiang prito. There is also a smaller version called lumpia Shanghai – the term itself is quite amusing as Shanghai (as in the city) has nothing to do with this Filipino offshoot. In Indonesia, the equivalent would be lumpia goreng (fried spring rolls). A cheaper and simpler variant of lumpia goreng is filled with fried vermicelli (also known as bihun), chopped carrots and cabbage.

Cebu’s ngohiong and the Singaporean ngoh hiang may sound similar, yet their only similarity is the five-spice powder used for their names. Our Cebuano version uses bamboo shoots or heart of palm and jicama in the filling, with a lumpia wrapper made of flour, cornstarch, salt, and water. The Singaporean ngoh hiang uses bean curd sheets to bind the filling together. As with lumpia or popiahs, ngoh hiang filling can also differ slightly, depending on the location or origin. The Teochew version includes shrimp or prawn with water chestnuts, while the Hokkien version, which we are more familiar with, includes pork and onions. At Violet Oon, a group of restaurants in Singapore named after its founder, who is also Singapore’s official food ambassador, the ngoh hiang served in the restaurants are made of prawns, crab meat, chicken, and water chestnut, seasoned with five-spice powder.

In Malaysia, ngoh hiang is also called lor bak, meaning “meat roll.” The main filling is pork with five-spice powder, salt, ground pepper, garlic and onions. Some recipes include prawns and water chestnuts as well. 

As with ngo hiong/ngoh hiang and lumpia/popiah, kikiam is Hokkien in origin. But the meaning of the words is a bit murky. After days of browsing online, looking for anything I could find to link the derivative roll with the resulting name, several possible root words popped out … but they don’t make sense, at least to me. The ki in kikiam is traced to koe, meaning “chicken” – throwing th entire thing in a roll (pun intended) because chicken is rarely, if ever, used in Philippine spring rolls; the meat in our spring rolls is mainly pork. Shrimp is optional. The conjoining word kiâm could mean “rice topping,” as in kiampung, or kián, meaning “cocoon.” How does this even make sense? Chicken rice topping or chicken cocoon in no way conjures up kikiam. 

Quirks aside, what connects these variations and offshoots of spring rolls is the shared history among our regional neighbors. As I firmly believe, there are more things that connect us than divide us, chief among these is our culinary heritage. Let’s put aside (perceived) differences and enjoy some spring rolls, fresh or fried.