Recipe: Dynamites!

Several weeks ago I was watching a show where one of the main characters kept talking about jalapeno poppers. I looked it up, and it looked yummy! It reminded me of something my mom once made - dynamite lumpia! It's a popular Filipino street dish, but I've never actually seen it sold anywhere (I've only had it once, when my mom made it at home), so I looked up the dynamite lumpia recipe two weeks ago and tried it, and Nuri and I loved it! So here's to round two: 

1. You'll need as much jalapenos as you want. The ones available to us were really large/long, but that's okay! This meant that I decided to cut them all in half. 

2. Before you do anything with the the jalapenos, wear hand gloves! The last time I did not, and my fingers and nails were burning for hours! You'll need to slice the japalenos on one side and take out the seeds (that's where the spice is!)

3. After taking out all the seeds, you can soak them in water (this is optional - but I learnt that soaking them for 30 minutes helps reduce the spicy-ness)

4. While the peppers are soaking, you can prepare the ingredients. Yes, we'll be stuffing these jalapenos! Last time, I just used fried ground beef and cheddar sticks.  This time, I had some spaghetti sauce left over (ground beef and tomato sauce), so I used some of that, with cheddar sticks and some cream cheese.

5. Now it's time to stuff your jalapenos! Oh, I also cut all the jalapenos in half. They were really long (longer than the small frying pan I was planning to use). But if your jalapenos are of a reasonable size, go ahead and use the whole thing! Google "dynamite lumpia" to see what I'm talking about (they do look better when you keep the head on!) But if, like us, you'd prefer smaller bites, go ahead and cut them in half and begin to stuff them:

6. Cream cheese, meatball sauce, and cheddar cheese all stuffed into the jalapenos:

7. Now it's time to wrap them in spring roll wrappers. I bought these ready made wrappers. Place the sheet in a diamond shape and place one jalapeno at the end near you, then roll once:

Then fold in the left and right wings. To make the wrapper stick, you can make your glue. I mixed some flour and water (small amount, just to make some kind of sticky paste):

Continue to roll. Then on the opposite end of the wrapper, place some glue which will lock everything in together:

There you go!

8. Of course Nuri and I didn't eat all of this in one go! I kept half in the freezer - Yes, you can store the extras in a closed container and fry whenever you want to! You don't need to thaw the spring rolls - they can go directly from the freezer to the frying pan.

Time to fry! Fry under golden brown, and enjoy!

The dynamites were truly THE BOMB! The jalapenos were soft, and the cheese was runny, and the meatball sauce was just tasty! We enjoyed these with some soy sauce and chilli. It's not spicy at all - taking out the seeds and soaking the jalapenos took all that away.