One of the first dates my husband took me on when we were dating was to Cherry Street Restaurant, a vegetarian Chinese restaurant. I’d never been to a vegetarian restaurant before and it was really fun. “Beef” with snow peas, brown rice and sharing scallion pancakes with my then-boyfriend quickly became my go-to meal. I wouldn’t call myself a connoisseur but I’ve since had scallion pancakes at a number of places and Cherry Street’s definitely the best. Unfortunately, the restaurant closed down several years ago. So when I stumbled upon this recipe on Delicious Days’ blog I couldn’t help but get sucked in: the photos of the finished product looked too authentic.
Making up the dough was easy enough: flour, water, salt. I did hand-knead it into a ball and then let my mixer and dough hook do the rest. The problem I had was that when I cut up the scallions, they were still wet from being washed. All that extra water transferred to the dough when I combined the scallions to the dough. That was a big problem. The added moisture in the dough meant that it was constantly sticking to the rolling pin. Not the mention the rolling, brushing with oil, coiling, re-rolling was kind of tedious.
But with all that said, the scallion pancakes were awesome. The flavor was great.
My other problem? The dipping sauce. I’ve only had the scallion pancakes with a kind of sweet soy sauce. I tried combining soy with sugar and scallions but the soy flavor was just too strong. I’d definitely need a new sauce recipe before making them again.
