Spring onion pancakes

After two weeks of living on crisps and wine I'm beginning to become interested in cooking again. Something that's caught my eye in the webbysphere as a tasty snack is the Chinese or Korean Scallion pancake, oniony, fried and served with plenty of spicy rice vinegary dipping sauce.

The method is almost the same as making stuffed parathas, Indian flat breads which I've been fairly successful with in the past, so I rolled up my sleeves and went back to the kitchen.



What I did was take 230g flour and 150ml warm water. Put the flour in the food processor and add 100ml of the water. Pulse to combine, then add water in tablespoon measures with the motor running until the whole mass forms a soft ball. Remove from the processor and knead for a few moments, you're aiming for a non sticky texture which is soft and pliable. Don't add too much more flour, just enough to stop it sticking to your hands. Form into a tidy ball and set aside, covered to rest for half an hour.

Meanwhile, chop a bunch of spring onions, about 10, finely so that you have 100g or so after preparation.

When it's rested roll your dough into a rough log shape and divide into six parts. Keep the sections covered as you work on each one.

Roll each part out into a circle about 25cm across. I experimented with more oblong shapes which seemed to make more sense from an engineering perspective but it's up to you.

Lightly brush the circle with oil, sesame is best but I didn't have any, and sprinkle your onions all over, then roll up from one edge to enclose all the onions in a long sausage. Make the sausage into a spiral, lightly flatten with the palm of your hand and set to rest while you make the others in the same way.

Finally roll out each spiral again to make a circle about 15cm across. The onions should be enclosed in thin dough and layered against each other.

Fry on a medium hot well greased griddle for about 4 minutes each side. Stack them up when they are golden and fragrant and divide into wedges. Serve with a dipping sauce of soy sauce, rice vinegar and water in equal parts with a little grated ginger and thinly sliced garlic in it. A few rings of a red chili are nice too.



Unfortunately they didn't turn out quite as toothsome as I had hoped, so the recipe is not a sure fire winner, more of a starting place that we can all move on from together.

The problems were that the onions burst through the very soft dough - two ways to help that would be to chop the onions more finely or to knead the dough longer so that the gluten develops better. I also wondered about briefly softening the onions before stuffing the breads although I've not seen any reference to this in the recipes I've researched.

The dough didn't stick together very well in the spirals so that they were tending to unravel on the griddle - too much flour when rolling out probably.

The end result was a little bit tough and not very flaky; this was a combination of all the problems above. The dough was a bit soft, over floured and the onions too large so that a long cooking time was needed. I also think I didn't use enough oil because I was trying to be healthy! Never try to be healthy with an ethnic food if you want to keep the proper character, enjoy it with full fat but don't eat it very often.