Scallion Pancakes

My parents made a real effort to expose me to myriad different cultural influences when I was young. In retrospect I’m thankful for all the experiences, but at the time I thought the food they made me eat was weird and, frankly, I just wanted a Wonder Bread fluffernutter for lunch like all my friends had. As anyone who was in the same boat can attest to, it kind of sucks being “the kid with the weird food.” Times seem to have changed a bit, and whereas we were the only vegetarian family I knew, I know countless vegetarians these days and I have no doubt Eliza will be friends with kids who eat even weirder food than I ever did.

I managed to find one dish within each of the different cuisines we ate that I enjoyed, like chole at India House, soft tacos at Hot Rositas, and scallion pancakes at the dim sum restaurant. I hated onions, but I loved scallion pancakes. They remain one of my favorite foods in the whole, wide world, and if they are on the menu, I will order them. That said, I haven’t found a single scallion pancake in all of Austin since I moved here two-plus years ago. In fact, I have yet to find a decent dim sum joint (Get Sum on North Lamar is next on my list; they don’t have scallion pancakes, but they do have red bean buns, which are also one of my favorites).

After gorging myself on scallion pancakes for a full week during a recent trip to my hometown, I decided enough was enough. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Or rather, if you can’t buy ‘em, make ‘em! I picked this particular recipe because I am a follower of @userealbutter on Twitter, and she always seems to put together some dynamite-looking recipes. This one is super simple, which is great because the idea of making my own dim sum was a bit daunting. But once I finished the first pancake and ate it, piping hot off the frying pan, I knew I had made the right decision. Another bonus is Use Real Butter’s generous use of beautiful illustrative photos; they helped reassure me that I was following the recipe correctly.

My advice? Make these, and make them often.

Chinese Scallion Pancakes