Name: Yueliang Xiabing (Moon Shrimp Cake between Two Spring Roll Wrappers)
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 45 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Taiwanese
Ingredients: 250 g prawns; 40 g pork back fat; 2 cloves garlic; 0.5 egg white; 1 tsp potato starch; 0.5 tsp salt; 1 pinch white pepper; 4 round spring-roll wrappers; 300 ml neutral oil; 4 tbsp sweet chilli sauce

Ingredients

4servings

Filling
prawns · weight peeled and deveined250 g
pork back fat · or 2 tbsp lard40 g
garlic2 cloves
egg white0.5
potato starch1 tsp
salt0.5 tsp
white pepper1 pinch
Wrappers and frying
round spring-roll wrappers · about 20cm across; two make one cake4
neutral oil · 1cm deep in the pan300 ml
sweet chilli sauce4 tbsp

Steps

Pat the prawns completely dry. Chop the fat and garlic fine, add the prawns and work them with the back of the knife until half is fine and half still in small pieces.
In a bowl, add the salt, white pepper, egg white and starch and stir in one direction for 2 minutes until tacky. Chill for 15 minutes.
⏲ 15 min
Spread half the filling over one wrapper, 4-5mm thick and even, right to the edge. Lay a second wrapper on top and press with your palm to push out the air.
Prick the top wrapper all over with a toothpick every 2-3cm. Turn it over and prick the bottom too.
Heat 1cm of oil in a pan to 160°C. Fry one cake at a time, 3 minutes on the first side, then turn and give it 2-3 minutes until golden. If a spot starts to puff, prick it again to let the steam out.
⏲ 6 min
Stand it on a rack to drain, rest 1 minute, then cut into eight. Serve with the sweet chilli sauce.
⏲ 1 min

Tips & Variations

Variations

Bite-sized: with small wrappers about 12cm across it becomes a drinking snack. Keep the filling the same thickness and cut the time to 2 minutes a side.
Oven or air fryer: brush both sides with oil and bake at 200°C. It colours, but the wrappers lose the fried texture they get in oil.
The name: the round golden cake is said to look like a full moon. ko.wikipedia files it as a Taiwanese xiaochi and notes that it is usually served in Yunnan and Thai restaurants.
The same shrimp filling at another thickness: menbosha puts a filling of the same family 1cm thick between two squares of bread. This uses paper-thin wrappers instead of bread, and half the filling.

Tips

Spreading it thin does the job of a second fry. Menbosha fries twice, and says why: "There is one reason for frying twice: done in a single hot fry, the outside burns while the shrimp inside is still raw." When the outside and the inside cook on different clocks, the fix is to split the frying in two. Yueliang xiabing matches the clocks with thickness instead. Spread 4-5mm thick, the filling cooks right through in the few minutes the wrappers take to turn golden. Spread it thick and you are back to menbosha's problem.
The holes are not decoration. The filling gives off steam as it cooks, and steam trapped between two wrappers behaves exactly as mille-feuille describes: "Without the holes, steam collects at whatever point is weakest and lifts that one spot into a dome." A top sheet lifted off the filling also leaves the oil, so it stays pale, and the gap it leaves makes the layers part when you cut it.
The fat keeps it moist. As menbosha's Variations put it, "a tablespoon of fatback or lard makes it noticeably juicier." A thin layer of prawn dries faster, so it matters more here.
Stir one way to build tack. Menbosha warns: "Without that tack, the filling separates from the bread". Here it separates from the wrapper instead of the bread.
Medium heat and plenty of oil. The whole wrapper has to be in the oil to colour evenly. With too little, only the middle browns and the edge stays white.
Rest a minute before cutting. Straight from the oil the filling is still soft and the knife pushes it out.

The basics behind this dish

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