Chinese Scallion Pancakes with Ginger dipping sauce - IFC Challenge #1 | Cong You Bing

When  Saraswathy and Shobana geared up to create this new event 'International Food Challenge' I knew I that I am definitely gonna participate in this one ! C'mon, who would want to miss a chance to learn some exotic dishes from the cuisines around the world? The added advantage is you can make them at home without having to search for that speciality restaurant in your locality :D And as it would please anyone, the first challenge was to experiment on Chinese cuisine especially from the Cantonese region. So let me give you guys some heads up on this cuisine as shared to us from the event organisers. 

Cantonese Cuisine, also named Yue Cuisine or Guangdong cuisine, is one of the main cuisine styles in China. It comes from Guangdong Province in southern China and it is one of among the eight great traditions of Chinese cuisine. The basic cooking techniques of Cantonese cuisine include roasting, stir-frying, sautéing, deep-frying, braising, stewing and steaming. Steaming and stir-frying are most commonly used to preserve the ingredients' natural flavors. The most characteristic cooking methods of Cantonese Cuisine are cooking in salt, cooking in wine, baking in a pan, and soft ¨C frying. 

We were given four recipes to choose from namely Spiral Moon Cake, Cantonese Savoury Glutinous Rice Dumplings, Cantonese Wonton Noodles Soup & Chinese Scallion Pancakes. I chose Chinese Scallion pancakes, the simpler one. This closely resembles the Kerala parottas in that APF is used to make these pancakes. Spring onions or Scallions is used as a stuffing. This is served with a sweetishly sour dip. I enjoyed having these, especially the dip which made the pancakes more tastier !

Recipe Source: Adapted from here

I Took: 40 minutes

Serves: 3-4 pancakes (5 or 6 inch dia)

I Used:

For Pancake:

All purpose flour/Maida	-	1 cup + more for dusting
Scallions/Spring Onions	-	¼ cup
Oil	-	4 tbsp
Salt	-	1 tsp / As Needed
Boiling-hot Water	-	¼ cup / As Needed

For Ginger-Dipping Sauce:

Thin Soya Sauce	-	¼ cup
Rice Wine Vinegar	-	¼ cup
Chopped Scallions	-	¼ cup
Crumbled Dried Red Chilly	-	1 tsp
Ginger	-	1 tsp
Toasted Sesame seeds	-	1 tsp
Sugar	-	1 tsp

The Way:

1. Sift together flour & salt. Add 2 tbsp oil and mix well
2. Slowly add the boiling-hot water & knead until it forms a soft & smooth dough
3. Cover with a damp cloth & allow it to stand for 20-30 minutes
4. Divide the dough into 3-4 pieces of equal size & roll them into balls using hand
5. On a floured surface, place a ball & roll it into a thin circle using a rolling pin
6. Spread a tsp of oil evenly over the pancake & sprinkle 1-2 tbsp of scallions over it
7. Roll up the pancake from one end (horizontally) like a rug
8. Curl (vertically) the roll around in a spiral. With the palm press the top of the spiral to flatten it. Using a rolling pin, roll again & flatten to achieve a 5 or 6 inch pancake
9. In a hot non-stick pan, pan sear both sides of the pancake (like you make chapathis) until golden brown. Add oil if necessary
10. Mix all the dipping ingredients together. Cut the pancake into wedges and serve them with the dipping sauce

Notes:

• I omitted rice wine vinegar in the dip as I did not have them. Still tasted awesome !

Cheers,

Chitz