Spring onion pancakes

February 11, 2017

Steph has developed a semi-annual potluck tradition to celebrate Chinese New Year - we've had a lot of fun trying out thematically appropriate recipes like peanut cookies, turnip cake, (failed) dumplings, orange szechuan ice cream and more. Cindy was organised this year and had pineapple tarts on the go early in the week (recipe to follow soon), but I left myself only a small window on Saturday afternoon to pull something together. 

Luckily, I had just the thing - this recipe by Andrew McConnell caught my eye in The Saturday Paper way back in October and it seemed like the perfect contribution to our potluck feast. I'm not super experienced at making my own dough-based products, so I was a bit apprehensive that I'd make a mess of it, but McConnell's instructions are clear and easy to follow and these worked out an absolute treat. Cindy insisted they were as good as versions she's had in restaurants and they were met with universal acclaim at the picnic (going particularly well in combination with Steph's excellent mock fish curry). A couple of tips: 1) be heavy-handed with the salt, it really pays off in the final result and 2) you can fry these with just a spray of oil, but they're more golden and delicious if you put a decent splash in the pan. 

Spring onion pancakes
(based on Andrew McConnell's recipe in The Saturday Paper)

300g plain flour
2/3 cup water
salt
Chinese five-spice
5 spring onions, thinly sliced
vegetable oil for frying

Mix the flour and water together in a bowl until it comes together into a firm, dry dough. 

Dust a bench lightly with flour and tip your dough onto it. Knead it for five minutes or so until it's nice and smooth. Pop it back into the bowl and cover it with cling wrap, leaving it to rest for 20 minutes or so.

Pop the dough back onto your bench and roll it out into a long sausage. Divide the dough up into 8 equal pieces - these will become your pancakes!

Roll each piece into a disc with a diameter of about 20 centimetres and lay them out somewhere convenient (we just popped them on a couple of cutting boards).

Take one disc at a time and get them ready for frying - start by lightly brushing one side with oil and then scatter shallots evenly across it, plus a generous pinch of five-spice and a good sprinkle of salt. Roll the circle of dough into a tight tube and then coil them into a circle, tucking the end of the coil underneath. Roll the coils back out so that they're flat again, taking care to avoid any gaps.

I did the above for all eight pancakes first so that I could concentrate properly on the frying once they were all ready. Put a decent splash of oil into a hot pan and then fry each pancake for about 2 minutes on each side, until they're nice and golden (top the oil up if and when you need to). 

They're best served immediately, but they're so good that they're crowd-pleasers even once they've cooled.