Breakfast doesn't seem to get much attention on weekdays here in the US. It seems that most people just get by with milk and cereal, some toast, and coffee or orange juice. When I am home in Taiwan, I usually have tons of choices. The traditional breakfast places serve freshly made soy milk, scallions pancakes, chinese chive pockets, and other pastries. These pastries were traditionally made with flour, water, and lard so that the crust has hundred of layers like puff pastry. The filling can be ground pork with scallions or malt sugar. There is also the plain pastry, and it is usually ordered with scrambled eggs (kept as one whole piece though) or "deep fried puff dough", another pastry that is super crunchy and puffed up. Another popular item is the egg pancake. The pancake part is like a crepe but much lighter, made without milk and butter. The egg is scrambled but in the pan it is kept as one sheet and allowed to stick to the pancake. The whole thing is then rolled into a cylinder and eaten with soy sauce. More modern breakdast places also serve this item, along with a fancy list of things: hamburgers, sandwiches, lo-mein, potstickers, turnip cake. You name it, they have it! I can probably go to the same place everyday for a month and not have to eat the same thing twice.
I don't have the luxury of going to these breakfast places in the US. But on the weekend I can still make some of these things to satisfy the craving. This recipe is from this website (
Recipe: Egg Pancake
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup water
120 g all-purpose flour (1 cup of sifted flour)
1 Tbsp corn starch1 egg
several eggs
several stalks of scallions
vegetable oil
salt
white pepper
1. Mix the salt, water, and 1 egg well.
2. Combine flour and corn starch with the egg mixture and stir into a thin batter. Cover and refrigerate for at least 20 minutes.
3. Thinly slice the scallions.
4. For each pancake, use about 1 tsp of oil in a non-stick pan to saute some scallion pieces. When they are a bit wilted, laddel some batter into the pan. Quicky spread the batter as thinly as possible. when the edges are cooked and look translucent, flip it to cook for another 30sec to a min.
5. Repeat step 4 until all batter was used.
6. For each sheet of pancake, one or 2 eggs can be used. Heat up some more oil in the pan. Scramble the egg in a cup with salt and pepper, and pour into the pan. While most of the egg is still liquid and uncooked, cover the egg with one pancake. Use a flat spatula to pat on top the pancake to squeeze out the uncooked egg onto the edges.
7. This should take very short amount of time to cook. Flip the whole thing and roll and serve with soy sauce.
Note: for variations, many things can be added to the scrambled egg in step 6, such as sweet corn kernels.
Comments