I love 葱油餅 Green Onion Pancake / Scallion Pancake. It's a street food. Yeah, people sell food on the road side, such as this video. Welcome to Asia.
Besides having growing green onions at home, I was searching for ways to use up my sourdough discard. What's that you might ask. Well, last winter some lady gave me a small ball of sourdough starter, and the new family member - Hope - the name I gave to my starter (yes...) was "born". Hope requires constant feeding. Some say, you have to replenish sourdough starter every day. To let you know how wasteful it might be, say if you have a 100g of sourdough starter, you would have to feed equal amount of water and flour daily. How does it look like?
Mon -- 100g of my sourdough - Hope 😀
Tue -- 100g of sourdough + 100g of flour + 100g of water = 300g of Hope
Wed -- 300g of Hope + 300g of flour + 300g of water = 900g of Hope 😨
No sensible home baking amateur can keep up with that kind of growth. So what to do? --> Yes, discard, sourdough discard. You only keep as much as you want to keep after each feeding. What to you do with sourdough discard? Well, besides dumping it in the compost, there are quite a few Youtubes on how you can save it.
Most recently, I came across another blogger's article called "sourdough discard scallion pancakes 葱油餅". This is brilliant! Du's doughs also uses sourdough discard for Chinese dumplings. It worked equally well. The dough I made using the formula (below) given and it turned out quite sticky, but the it's worth the extra work & extra flour.
100 g all purpose flour
45 g warm water
50 g sourdough starter discard
😊 Picture of work in progress:
I piled up the green onion pancake, each with layer of saran wraps and lots of flour to prevent sticking. They are going to the freezer (Yes, it freezes well).
Oops... I forget to take a photo of how it looked like after I pan fried them (gorgeous, please take my word). Some people will eat green onion pancake as it is. For me, dusting the pancake with "popcorn chicken powder - 鹹酥雞粉", or dab in "Sea Mountain Sauce - 海山醬", really hits home for me, literally and figuratively.
Yes, I made "Sea Mountain Sauce - 海山醬" to go with it since we don't have ”sweet & spicy sauce - 甜辣醬" (another classic, it's on my shopping list... lazy me feels it's too much work if _I_ also have to make the sauce) at home. I have no idea why it's called sea mountain sauce, but I think it might be refer to it's numerous, comprehensive & broad ways of usage. You put it on top of a lot of street food in Taiwan. I watched several videos such as this one, and the basic ingredients are (I added garlic myself):
砂糖 sugar 4 tbsp
蕃茄醬 ketchup 6 tbsp
醬油/膏 soy sauce 2 tbsp
Mix then add
水 water 2 cup
味噌 miso 2 tbsp
Mix then add
在來米粉 starch 1 tbsp
水 water 1/2 cup
Mix then add
辣椒醬 chili sauce optional
大蒜 garlic optional
Don't take my words for it. If you have excess sourdough discard that you don't know what to do with, give this recipe a try.
A Green Onion Pancake, also known as the Scallion Pancake as well as Cong You Bing, is basically a nice tasting flatbread which is folded with oil. All you need are some basic pantry ingredients to make a great green onion pancake – all-purpose flour, water, salt, vegetable oil, and green onion. These pancakes are cooked in a unique way, and you've shared an incredible recipe with us. Martabak Manis is a fantastic spot to go if you want to try a variety of pancakes. Thank you so much for giving this tasty recipe.
ReplyDelete