Having fairly recently been back to Taiwan (aka food heaven) I've been craving lots of Asian food. Now of course Asians are EVERYWHERE and New Zealand did not escape. And where there are Asians there are Asian Restaurants, where they employ Asians such as me for cheap labor. But I digress, even though they have awesome noddles, dumplings and other good Asian food, I haven't seen any of them make Chinese pancakes so if I want to eat something and no one makes them, I guess I'll just have to make them myself!
It all started when one night at our two bedroom flat with all of our food pretty much eaten (NOT ONLY BY ME!) I was wondering what I can make for myself and Stacie for dinner. Thankfully I've been thinking about food all day and especially craving Chinese pancakes so I quickly look online for recipe. I was overjoyed to see that it only requires a few ingredients, which luckily have not been used up, and seem fairly easy to make. And for something that easy to make it sure tasted sweet as! (kiwi saying... don't ask) This won't cost you an arm an a leg and you make enough for three meals/snacks times. I mean even for my sizable stomach I was full after two!
Here is the recipe I found online basically just translated to English. I followed the easiest one I found and only used regular oil but I am going to try make my own oil crisp with the end of spring onions as substitute next time.
What you need:
- 500 g flour
- 1 cup boiling hot water
- 1/2 cup cold water (the recipe says 1 cup but the dough gets too sloppy when I tried to put 1 cup of water in and had to add lots of flour later)
- 3 or 4 spring onions
- salt
- oil ( any kind is fine, I used olive oil.)
Soooo to make the yummy Chinese pancake aka 蔥油餅 in Chinese, you'd have to get your hands wet. Well actually... Sticky is more like it. So roll up your sleeves and itch all your itchy spots before the flour flies over the kitchen, and your shirt. And possibly your butt.
First dump the flour in a big mixing bowl, then mix in the boiling water while constantly stirring with chopsticks if you got the chops :-P or any stirring utensil you prefer. Pour the cold water in afterwards stirring until the dough is evenly mixed. Now cover it with cling wrap and leave for about 15 min to "wake the dough". Use this time to prepare the spring onions.
(P.s. don't worry if the dough is too... wet and sticky, you can add more flour when you start rolling it out. Or if you want to add it now it's up to you. Basically you want the dough to be in the consistency of not-sticking-on-your-fingers-or-the-table. What I'm trying to say is make the dough, dough like consistency, duh! Phew translating is hard...)
Continuing on with our lovely friend spring onions. Wash it all clean and cut off the ends bit (if you want to make the oil crisp keep the head bit, don't even cut off the little roots. I'll tell you what to do with those later.) Slice the rest of the spring onions including all the green bits and lay it out on a plate for it to dry. The white bits are harder and would poke through the dough so unless you cut it thinner I would not use it.
Now the dough is "waken" (I don't know the proper terms) it should be quite elastic which means we're ready to roll out the dough!
Sprinkle some flour on the surface you're rolling the dough on so it doesn't stick. In the case that you added too much water, like me, than you need to sprinkle a LOT more flour and kneed it until the dough doesn't stick on your fingers like slime making it hard to even open your hand.
Once you fix the "sticky situation" roll out the dough into long thick sausage shape (really thick sausage) then section cut it every 2 inches.
Put all the pieces aside. Take one piece, roll out with a rolling pin into flat round shape as if you're making pizza, small and thin ones. (If you don't have a rolling pin than I'm sure you have a bottle of wine, dust some flour on it and now you got a rolling pin. The best ones I found are the bottle screw tops with a bit at the neck that's free so you can hold on to it and roll the bottle without making a rash in your hand from all the friction.)
>>Sprinkle some salt and oil on the dough you just rolled out and sprinkle the spring onion bits all over like you are making pizza and spring onion is your pepperoni. Aka be generous with it.
*Roll the dough from top to bottom so you wrap up the spring onions inside like a scroll. Then roll the scroll into itself like a spiral.
#Now use your rolling pin/wine bottle and roll the dough out again, crushing the spring onions inside. That's how you get the sweet taste.
Repeat step * and #. I repeat it two times. (The more time you repeat those two steps the fluffier your pancake will be. )
After your last fluffy cycle, flatten the dough after you roll it up like a scroll and leave it for when you're ready to fry them. (You can spread some oil on the outside so they don't stick together)
Now repeat from >> to all the pieces of dough you cut up earlier so they all have spring onions tucked inside.
When you're done with all the doughs then you are ready to fry them!
Heat the pan up in medium heat. (You don't really need to add oil since there's already some in the dough. Although you can experiment with or without oil in the pan. )
While the pan is heating roll out one of the doughs. When the pan is hot put on your rolled out dough and fry it in medium to small flame until both sides is golden. (If you like it crispy then fry it longer. You can see the dough become transparent while it's being cooked.)
When one pancake is frying in the pan you can roll out the next one. You can also keep the dough in the fridge and roll it out later when you're hungry. They are quite filling.
I usually eat them plain but Stacie likes it with soy sauce. Hot sauce is also quite good with it.
Now this is the first time I ever wrote a recipe (even though I'm half copying/translating it) so I'm sorry if it is too confusing to follow without picture for each step.
Hopefully it's easy enough and now you have made yourself some delicious Chinese/Taiwanese pancake!!
Be stuffed be happy :D
