Surprise!
I have tried making scallion pancake 2-3 times with different recipes, but have not achieved satisfactory results yet. This accidental, unplanned scallion pancaking experiment was a surprised success. The dough was leftover from hand-pulled noodle dough, and has been stored in fridge for 3 days. I almost forgot about this leftover dough when I planned to bake something else on Saturday.. Following a recommended recipe for scallion pancake, I rolled the cold dough out, cut off my short, young, self-growing scallion, put 3x more corns than scallion, and… the scallion pancake was a great success!
So with a dough NOT for the purpose of scallion pancake, adapting from two different recipes, I successfully made delicious, satisfactory scallion pancake!
TAKEAWAYS:
- Since this is a serendipitous success using dough making and scallion cooking from two different recipe, it’s still a self-tested adoption. More steps need to measure if this could be my new recipe for scallion pancake!
- test if resting dough in fridge for 2-3 days make it crispy: use the noodle dough for scallion pancake right after
- test if it’s the noodle dough that did the magic trick: follow Peiren’s scallion pancake from the start to the end
- Rolling in salt on both sides of pancake dough evens out flavor! It’s not too light as my previous attempts
- Adding corn did make pancake tastier! and sweeter.
RECIPE Part I — “NOODLE DOUGH”
Recipe from Garden Time 田園時光, attached below.
Ingredients:
- Hand-pulled noodle of 2 portion
- 2 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/2 tsp salt (increase elasticity of noodle)
- 1 cup water
Process:
- melt 1/2 tsp salt in 1 cup water
- slowly add salted water to flour, use chopstick to stir the flour at the same time to help absorb water.
- How fast flour absorbs water varies dependent on the area’s humidity and flour property
- if the dough is forming and wet enough, do not need to add all water, knead dough.
- Should be as firm as medium-rare steak (how muscle beneath/base of thumb feels when thumb and middle finger touch)
- rest for 10 mins, knead; repeat till the dough is smooth.
- I repeated 3-4 times of resting and kneading, dough becomes very soft and smooth
- **Wrap dough in plastic wrap, store in fridge for 3 days**
RECIPE Part II — Scallion Pancake making, without dough 😉
Recipe from Peiren MAMA 培仁蔬食, attached below.
Ingredients (not full recipe, cut out the dough part):
- scallion (cut from my self-growing, young green onion 🙂 )
- corn (did not have enough scallion haha! also to add some crispy texture and sweet flavor)
- oil
Process:
- roll out dough till flat and thin (mine was 1-2mm)
- spread out salt evenly, roll to press them in; repeat on both sides
- add 1-2 tbsp oil on one side; layers of pancake is made by enough oil.
- spread the oil with hand, or spread by folding and unfolding the dough if do not want to get oily hand
- spread scallion, corn evenly
- roll the dough gently, tighter, into one long piece
- squeeze both ends of the dough so no oil, scallion or corn is “leaking” out
- twist both ends of the dough towards opposite direction
- for example, if roll the left side upward, roll the right side downward, to make it looks like twisted rope
- “coiled-up snake”:
- hold on/”pin” one end (the snake tail) to cutting board and do not move that end, hold another end (the snake head) to circle around the “snake tail”, like a coiled up snake.
- stick the snake head end to the snake tail end at the center.
- *important!* gently press so it would not loose up when pan fried.
- cover with wet towel, rest for 20mins to 1 hour (I have not tried 1 hour yet)
- brush coiled-up snake dough with oil
- press down to preferred thickness (not too thin, other wise will burn easily and not much layers
Cooking:
- heat up non stick pan to medium before putting pancake in, no oil need
- put in pancake, NO LID, till the bottom side has some brown spots
- flip pancake to brown the other side; COVER WITH LID till bottom side has some brown spots.
- SMASH: now use a spatula to scoop up pancake, SMASH hardly onto the pan to loosen the layers so they are not sticking to each other;
- repeat twice for both side
- add oil on the edge for final frying
- use spatula to swirl the pancake so the edge and center get to fry in oil; flip and do the same for the other side.
- Medium low for thinner pancake; medium high for thicker pancake
- when pancake dough becomes more transparent, it should be done
- remove and put on oil absorbent paper
READY TO SERVE!
Resources
Recipe for making dough for noodle and this pancake!
Recipe for making scallion pancake
