I first fell in love with jian bing 煎饼 almost ten years ago on my first trip to Shanghai. A light eggy pancake, with chili paste, sometimes pickled greens, green onions, and a crispy cracker folded in it, it’s the very definition of everything that’s good about Chinese street food. Fresh off the griddle and folded up into a thin plastic bag, it’s also the perfect handheld meal. The prospect of eating another made it maybe the number three, number two reason I went to China this fall.
Alas, we never got to jian bing, but Kevin did find us its close cousin when we were in Shanghai last month. We’d been having lavish home-cooked and banquet-style restaurant meals with his family in Suzhou, and by the time we got to Shanghai, were ready for more casual fare. Kevin found this spot via the Chinese version of Yelp, and as we walked down the street counting down the building numbers, we were looking for a cafe of some sort.
It turned out to be a business the size of a coat closet, with barely enough room for a worktable, a griddle, and two workers–one to roll out the dough and another to fry each ball up into the flaky fried discs they’d eventually become. The two women who worked there that morning stood side by side in a space so narrow they had to file in one at a time to get into position. We ordered two cong you bing with egg in it. Neither a classic cong you bing nor the street food favorite jian bing, this one was a green onion pancake with an egg cracked over it. It was delicious.
And this week, Kevin figured out how to fake it at home. I’d long ago resigned myself to never being able to eat this outside of China, and so tasting even a vague approximation of it filled me with such happiness, and revived all my longing to go back.
Here are the directions: Take one frozen cong you bing 葱油饼. We’re fond of this brand (and we’ve tried a lot of frozen cong you bing). Cook according to the directions–with a dip of oil over medium low heat. After 3-4 minutes on both sides, pour a scrambled egg or two over the pancake and cook, then flip again. Serve with a dab or two of hoisin and chili paste or sriracha.
It’s a little bit Sandra Lee, and I loved it. (We were using up a different brand of frozen pancake–yours will look better than this.)