Simply a Scallion Pancake

Welcome back to the blog.  I know it’s been a while since my last installment of “Quarantine Cookin,” but my teachers suddenly decided to start assigning homework.  Totally not cool of them.  But as the school year winds down, I’ve got more time on my hands. So here I am, investing in sharpening my kitchen skills.

One day, I was pursuing one of my favorite cookbooks: “101 Easy Asian Recipes” by Lucky Peach.  For the heathens who aren’t aware of Lucky Peach, it was a short-lived magazine that was the result of a collaboration between food writer Peter Meehan and restaurant titian David Chang.  In fact, the name of David Chang’s restaurant empire is Momofuku: Japanese for lucky peach.  If you know me, you know that I practically have a shrine to David Chang in my kitchen.  Sadly, Lucky Peach is no longer being published, but since then, Peter Meehan has ascended to the position of editor of the Food section of the LA Times.  So shout out to him, I know he definitely reads this blog.

Anyway, within this amazing cookbook I discovered a simple recipe for an incredible snack that I enjoyed on my previous visits to the isle of Taiwan: scallion pancakes.

I first had them in the summer of 2018:

They’re flaky and crispy, with a subtle bite of scallion enhanced by a dollop of chili paste.  So simple yet so instantly addictive.  When we returned to Taiwan this last winter, I knew I had to have them again.

I can’t really describe how good these bad boys are.  They’re almost like flour tortillas with scallions imbedded in them, but that description doesn’t do them justice.  You really just need to try them.

At any rate, I embarked on a quest to recreate that transcendent pancake so here we go.

First things first: I dice up a truckload of scallions.

Next: the dough is really simple, it’s just flour, butter, water, and salt.

After our dough is… well, doughy, we form it into six little dough balls.  Said dough balls are then flattened into pancakes.

After we’ve got our pancakes, I slather them with sesame oil, about a tablespoon of scallions, and a sprinkling of salt.  We then roll up those pancakes with the scallions on them like we’re rolling up some sushi.  With our weird scallion pancake log, we’re gonna twist it up into a Cinnabon-esque shape.

From here, for a cruel practical joke you can bake these, cover them in frosting, and gift them to unsuspecting friends.  I like to call these ‘Cinnamon Buns From the Ninth Circle of Hell’.

But if you aren’t a sadistic monster, we’re gonna roll them back out again after letting them sit so we have another pancake, but this time it’s got the scallions in it:

After 5 minutes or so in a ripping-hot cast iron skillet with about 1/8 inch of cooking oil, they emerge crispy and golden brown.

You can eat them plain, or you can smear them with hoisin sauce and top with steak for a stratospherically good dinner.  I cleverly remarked while eating that it was like ‘moo shu pork meets a steak sandwich’.

Just a side note about that massive stalk of broccoli you see next to my steak roll.  When Doug was grilling the steak, some genius decided that in lieu of our usual salad with dinner, we would grill broccoli.  However, broccoli is not a food that lends itself naturally to grilling.  We essentially ate raw broccoli that was slightly singed on the outside.  However, the steak, hoisin, and scallion pancake combo was enough to wash the memory of that horrid broccoli away.

In conclusion: You’re stuck at home.  Make these!  They’re easy and delicious.  I’ll even give you the recipe here.  Now you have no excuse not to make them.  Let me know how they turn out.