Fried Siomai

A friend of mine told me that I should make a comparative review between Ministop's Siomai and from the ones I sampled on the street. His request got my head swayed in disagreement. I know they're both siomai but it's like comparing between stainless owner- type-jeep made from a local mechanic's shop to a high end assembly line of Land Rover. Get what I mean?

So, I'd rather compare fried siomai found on food cart on the streets at the same level. After a thorough search around my neighborhood, I ended up only in one food cart that serves just that. Ok, that was disappointing. My supposed to be a comparative review plan ended up as a simple food review. Perhaps nobody has thought of making a competition out of this food from my neighborhood. The source of this fried snack is at Blumentrit corner P. Florentino St.

As you can see, the filling is just a centimeter in length and the rest is siomai wrapper.

Fried siomai takes off traditional way of cooking it through steam. If others like their siomai to be "chewy" and soft, deep frying it makes it crunchy,  adding a bit of noise while chewing it. And of course an additional intake of fat to your system from the cooking oil.

The price of this snack is P10 for every four pieces. This is a good temporary relief from hunger. Breaking open one sample shows not a complexity of ingredients but peculiarity. I was expecting something that has a meatier texture found on embutido or on a typical steamed siomai, but this particular sample of fried siomai is "starchy". 

The filling is ridiculously small and flat wrapped on a single siomai wrapper. If there's something I could distinguish from it's contents, it would be the carrots, onions, black pepper and the rest, well, I don't know. It's crunchy outside because of the wrapper but the inside is quite soft. The chance of distinguishing a ground pork from the filling is 1 out of 100. I did notice a tiny piece of ground pork but that was when I ate the last the piece. Oooppss.