Wednesday 10 April 2013

Chinese pancakes (for crispy duck)

We both love crispy aromatic duck. I can't remember what the largest order we made was (a whole duck maybe?), but we have sometimes had just the crispy duck in restaurants and not bothered with any other courses. Mmmmmmmm.
Sainsburys do a DIY one, so we could even have it when we couldn't be bothered to go out (take away ones always seem to arrive a bit soggy).
Chinese food is reasonably popular here, but the chinese in town doesn't do crispy duck (!) so we decided we need to make our own. We tracked down plum sauce in the chinese supermarket in Tarbes (we went there for the first time today - excitingly they also have various curry ingredients and indian pickles). They didn't have the pancakes though so I had to make them!

Makes 16 (approx 15-20cm in diameter)
250g flour
approx 170ml boiling water
Some oil

Add the boiling water to the flour and stir into a sticky dough. You can add more water if you need.
Kneed briefly to ensure the mixture is well mixed (no need to kneed like bread)
Divide in to 16 equal size pieces and roll in to balls
Flatten each ball and roll out a little - so it is maybe 5 cm in diameter
Then paint one side of each with oil (seseme ideally - but any will do) and stick them together oily sides facing and roll out further until they are between 15 and 20 cm in diameter. Try not to get creases as you roll as that will make it more difficult to separate the two later. You shouldn't need flour to do this as the oil should stop them sticking to the work surface.
Fry the double pancake gently in a dry frying pan (no oil on the outside of the pancakes). Do for a few minutes each side. They don't change much in appearance so just guess when they are done :)
Pick up out of the frying pan and peel the two pancakes apart with your fingers. They should come apart easily
Put the pancakes in to a steamer (ideally a bamboo chinese one, but a normal one will do fine). Put down a layer of grease proof paper or tin foil before you put the pancakes in.
Serve wrapped around plum sauce (going to have a go at making that too sometime), cucumber and aromatic crispy duck.
This first time I just used a duck leg we had already roasted in the freezer - we are going to give proper (ish) aromatic duck a go. I say ish because the authentic process involves being able to deep fry a whole duck which isn't going to happen here!




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