Scallion Pancakes

I get in a rut sometimes when it comes to restaurants.  I’ll look foward to a particular dish and order it all the time and fail to wander around the menu and get to know new things.  That must be how I missed scallion pancakes until now.  I made these yesterday.

Very delicious!

eg and I went to a hole in the wall Chinese restaurant in Rockville, Maryland.  We actually were going to a Tex Mex place on Rockville Pike, but then she got a business call and I offered to wander and look until she was done.  This little place was around the side of a typical strip mall building– you know, the kind of development I have been protesting for almost forty years — and there was a review reprint in the window.  I read a recommendation for “crispy potatoes” and since I’d never heard of potatoes and Chinese food in the same sentence, I was hooked.

It was a find.  It’s the kind of place you think you’ll run into and instead you see all chain restaurants.  Dark, narrow, the only light was at a place which said to place your order here.  We two indecisive birds had real problems with the long, long menu on which everything was cheap.  Have I hooked you yet?  It’s called Joe’s Noodle House, but there is no Joe and hardly any noodles.  We ordered lots of cheap dishes, thinking they’d be small and they weren’t.  I served the leftovers to six people later that night with a little mumbo jumbo to make them seem new.  All this for about $18.

So, we’ve been curious about these pancakes and both eg and I had looked them up on the internet and of course found loads of different ways to make them.  I immediately discarded any with a lot of ingredients, because if they were complicated they wouldn’t be able to sell a stack for $1.89 or some other ridiculous price.  I remembered them as dense and chewy and obviously fried in oil.

eg made these last week.

Green!

She says they were good, but they certainly were not what we expected.  The scallions were boiled first which apparently released all their green-making power.

Here’s the recipe I used– couldn’t be simpler:

Makes 8 pancakes of 7-8″

• 2 cups (260 g) plain flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (237 ml) boiling water
• 1/2 cup (75-80 g) finely chopped scallions
• oil for frying

Put the flour and salt in a heatproof bowl, then pour the boiling water over them and stir with a fork to dampen the flour.  Once it is warm instead of killing hot, use your hand to finish mixing the dough, which will start crumbly and reluctant, but will absorb every drop and become stretchy and rollable.

Once it is well mixed and smooth, throw it onto a really floury surface and start rolling it in every direction until it is relatively thin.

Spread the minced scallions over the dough, side to side, and then gently roll the whole thing up.

You know, that looks pretty bright for such a dull and rainy day.  Anyway, once this is rolled, cut it into two pieces, then fold them in thirds the long way and knead a bit to get the scallions really into all parts of the dough.  Work one-half of it at a time so it won’t dry out if you move a little slow, like me.

Cut the half into four pieces.  Fold each piece into thirds again, then flatten it with your floury hand and roll it out with a floury rolling pin.  I rolled and cooked because otherwise each pancake seemed to try to become one with whatever surface it was on.  Besides, it takes about 2 minutes on medium-high to cook each side, and that’s long enough to press and roll another pancake.  Funny how perfectly that works out.

Rolled out and still raw

That’s a chef’s knife there, just for scale.  These obviously cannot be rolled thinner than the largest piece of scallion, so I pulsed them in a food processor to be sure they wouldn’t be lumpy.

Heat a frying pan, or two if you are very able, and add enough oil so that these fry rather than toast.  Cook on one side until the pancake starts to be translucent in the middle, then flip it.  It should be golden pale with browned spots but not burned.  You’ll need to add a little more oil between pancakes.

At Joe’s, one serving was three pancakes, but I found two was a lot.  Anyway, this time of year you will probably have all the ingredients around, they are really delish so why not make some?  And if you live in Italy, invite a Chinese to lunch.  They’ll be so happy.

If you only have 2 cups of flour in the house, do not make these.  It takes a lot of flour to make this very sticky dough behave itself.  I also recommend an impervious and non-stick surface for rolling out.  (Hint: a tortilla press will not work.)  I used my Silpat sheet and thank goodness I had it.  Still, for eg it was a good way to use the scallions that came in her first CSA box, the pancakes were cheap, pretty easy and just delicious.

If I lived near to Joe’s or another place like that, I wouldn’t make these again, but I don’t.  The local Chinese is so inept that the owners would probably like to come eat these at my house.  I’m sure I’ll make them for the freezer for when Asian is on the menu, but yesterday they were eaten with chicken soup and they were much better than the soup!