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Monday, December 28, 2009

葱抓饼 – Spring Onion Pancake

Remember the book from before? 三杯面粉72变?

I have finally made my first recipe from there.

I love to eat spring onion pancake – in any other form as well.

I made it once … a few months back, but it wasn’t successful.

This time. It is. Just not a 100%.

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What caught my eye was that it was roti prata like. Only, it didn’t taste like roti prata.

It was all good. What was nice was that it was very crispy and crunchy. but. it was not soft enough. meaning the layers in between.

To me, 2 things could have gone wrong. Firstly, this is a 烫面团, meaning that the dough was made using hot water. So, my water might have not been hot enough to cook the gluten which produces a soft dough. This recipe called for warm water instead, so maybe mine was not warm enough or my version of warm is really cold. =)

Secondly, i think i might have rolled the dough too thinly making it really flat, hence instead of crunchy outer layers and soft dough inside, all i get is the crunchy outer layers.

Still Still… it tasted good. and i will definitely try again to make it better.

Ingredients

Dough

2 1/2 cups of plain flour – 350g
1 cup warm water (I'll find out the exact temperature needed)
<1 tbsp oil

Filling

1/2 cup flour – 70g
4tbsp oil
3tbsp sesame oil – or pork lard

Enough spring onions
Salt

Directions

Make the dough first.

In a bowl, add the sifted flour and water. Since it will be warm/hot, use a pair of chopsticks to mix the dough and water together. When it is breadcrumb looking, and not too hot, change to your hands instead. Combine everything.

Add the oil and keep kneading in the bowl till the oil is absorbed.

Onto your table, or in my case, my favourite tool at the moment is my silicone baking mat, start kneading your dough. You have no idea how easy cleaning up is.

The original instructions weren’t too clear, but i don’t think you have to knead for a long time, just till everything comes together in a nice soft dough.

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Place the dough back into the original bowl that has now been oiled. Cover with a towel, or in my case, i just covered it with the silicone mat.

Let it rest for 30 minutes.

In the meantime, get ready the filling.

Chop up the green onions.

For the part that makes it crunchy, take the 1/2 cup flour and combine it with the 7tbsp of oil. *This i have to try again as it did seem a little too watery, i might just use 6tbsp instead of 7.

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By this time, the dough should be ready.

This part on, it might get a little complicated.

Taking the rested dough, which should be nice and soft, roll into a cylindrical shape. and divide the dough into 6 or 7 equal portions. I did 6.

Taking one portion, roll it out into a long oval shape.

Sprinkle a generous amount of salt.

Using a spatula or brush, spread 1/6 of the amount of oil mixture around the dough.

Sprinkle the spring onions.

Sprinkle salt again if necessary – and yes i think it is, cause my end product was not salted enough.

From the long ends (which are the sides) of the dough, roll the dough into a long rod-like shape. It will get messy because some of the oil mixture is gonna overflow and get everywhere. That’s where a silicone baking mat is really handy.

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After rolling it into a long shape, using your knife, or pastry cutter, cut 2-3 time across the length of the dough.

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The slicing across the dough is to ensure that it is able to turn later.

After slicing, put it aside to rest for approx 5 minutes while you continue to do the rest.

After resting, or if you did it in batches – like me.

It’s time to roll them up.

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First, you twist the rope of dough. As in the picture above. Then with one end, you start turning it inwards, to form a snail shell shape.

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What i neglected to do in this picture, but i did figure out when rolling the dough out, is to tuck the tails into the bottom so they don’t stick out.

Make them all into such shapes and then.. clear the table, clear the mat.

Now. Plastic bags. Not the shopping ones, the ones we use to keep food in.

Taking 6 plastic bags, open one side of each bag.

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Place the rest of the bags aside.

Place one dough into the centre of the bag.

Using a rolling pin, roll it to about the size of the plastic bag. But don’t overdo it, you still want it to have a bit of thickness – if not you’ll end up like mine – all crunchy and crispy.

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The good thing about this is that, they can be frozen and they won’t stick onto each other. So every time you want to eat one, just take one plastic bag out and fry.

Remember, this is not a low fat dish. The pancake needs oil to fry.

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You would think that with all the oil, this is going to taste oily. But it is not. If not, how would it be crispy?

We were having Pork ball congee with this that night and i had onion oil on hand. So i drizzled some – actually it was Fish’s genius idea. It actually tasted really good. 很香! but it made it taste a little oily.

I’m very happy with myself. I will definitely be making this again.

I made this yesterday and today, we had loads of green onions left. I regretted not using more for this dish. The amount of green onions i used could have been doubled, even tripled.

So.. i made Spring Onion Pancake again today! Only this time, it’s different, but English doesn’t differentiate between the two. It’s 葱油饼.

This one is not as oily. and uses a yeast dough and is definitely not as messy.

I made that tonight and placed them in the fridge since we were too full after dinner.

But i will post the recipe and pictures after i taste them!

Spring Onion Feast!!

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