77.Chinese flat bread with scallion -- Cong You Bing (V)

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Chinese Flat bread with scallion

葱油饼

I love flour based food, noodles, all kinds of Chinese ‘bread’ and ‘flat bread’, dumplings, baozi… If one day I am getting really really big, it will be because of the flour. :))) But, I cannot cut it off my diet, so I go to jogging more often… Ha…

This Cong You Bing is one of my favorites, but, because of its caloric count, I don’t make it often. In literal translation, it is spring onion and scallion flat bread (bing), in some translations, it is also called ‘Chinese green onion pancakes’ or scallion pancakes. It has distinctive scallion smell and taste, which makes it different to other Chinese ‘bing’ recipes.

Some say this recipe originated in Taiwan, others say it is from northern China. I vaguely remember my grandma used to make something similar, but not the exactly the same. Cong you bing only became popular in North since mid 1990s, it firstly came out as a ‘xiao chi’, like ‘small bite’, I used to go to this ‘small bite’ bars with my best friends, with a few pieces of Cong you bing, and some soup, talked for a whole afternoon.

Only later, it became possible to order Cong yu bing in some restaurants. In England, I had it couple of times in Chinese restaurants when having ‘dimsim’, it turned out to be quite different thing -- still with scallion, but fried, quite oily.

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75. A sweet corn recipe: Chinese stir fried sweet corn and pine nuts

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Chinese stir fried corn and pine nuts

松仁玉米

It sounds funny, I have never been a big fan of sweet corn, but I like it, like to hold it, like to smell it after being grilled.

Well, I can't really have much corn anyway, because my stomach sometimes aches after having it. But, I love to play with it. :)) I remember when I was little, my auntie would bring baskets and baskets of freshly picked maize back to my grandparents when the harvest season of corns came, and we, the small kids would happily be there to ‘help’ husking. Only later it turned into a ‘fashion’ design game, as we started ‘braiding’ the peels into shoes. We laughed in between the piles of corn’s peels -- the best of carefree childhood.

From mid autumn to winter, ‘grilled’ corn on cob is very popular in northeast China. The sellers would put a small coal grill around the corner of the schools, or in the street food markets, grill and sell the corn. The best corn is the one that is slightly burnt on the very surface. I thought I have totally forgotten the smell over these years, but when I walk in the streets in Spain, there are many small ‘grilled corn’ stall in the streets, just like my hometown.

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64.Stir fried spring onion with lamb slice

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葱爆羊肉 （Cong bao yang rou)

Having said I am not a big fan of meat, this lamb dish is one of the very few I really like. - Confused by my statements of what kind of food I like? -- I am confused by myself as well. When I try to put down my food preference, for example, when I am taking a long haul flight, it is really difficult, like my husband says, ‘difficult to generalize the food for her - meat is ok, but no chicken or pork, vegetarian is good, but if there are cheese and cream, then no.’
- It is confusing, I know, my picky Chinese food upbringing. :)

Lamb in Chinese Ethnic Cuisine

Lamb, as I mentioned in anther post, is very important in my ethnic group’s traditional cuisine. Growing up with lamb, I can take lamb dishes cooked in many different ways, even if they have strong ‘lamb’ smell. But this dish is really ideal for me, tender - does not even have to feel the texture of ‘meat’; flavored (with spring onion, chilli and cumin) can just mask all the ‘lamb’ smell. It takes little time to cook (apart from the preparation), and is a very presentable dish for weekday dinner as well as a treat for guests. :)


This dish is called ‘Cong bao yang rou’ in Chinese - as spring onion stir fry lamb. Well, not totally exact, ‘Bao’ is one of the ways of cooking when stir frying. It is to cook quickly on very strong fire with very hot wok.

The way spring onion is used in this recipe is quite unusual; spring onion acts as part of the ‘main’ ingredients, (I prefer to use ‘Chinese big spring onion’ (Pic below left) or even leeks). So the lamb is heavily influenced by its taste. Last weekend, we bought some ‘long’ spring onion, which is very rare to find in the normal supermarkets, so I thought it was good to cook this dish. The meat from the back legs of lamb is the most suitable one.

                            Image source:www.dacongwang.com

The recipe: Stir fried spring onion with lamb slice

There are actually many ways of making this dish. One could mix the meat with seasonings first, or stir fry directly. One could stir fry the spring onion first, then add in lamb or stir fry lamb first then spring onion.

In this case, I decided to stir fry the lamb first, because the spring onion is not good to be stir fried for too long, it will loose the freshness which is quite essential in this recipe. But if I use leeks, I would normally stir fry the leeks first, then the lamb.)


Here you go.

Ingredients:

Lamb (from the leg), spring onion or leeks

Crushed chilli, salt, oil, cumin seeds, vinegar, sugar, cooking wine, light soy sauce, garlic and ginger.

Preparing:

1)Slice the lamb meat as thin as possible.

2) In a mix bowl, mix sliced meat with a teaspoon of cumin seeds, a few drops of vinegar and light soy sauce, 1/2 teaspoon of sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 1/3 teaspoon of crushed chilli. Leave the mixture for around 1 hour.

Adding seasonings to the lamb

3)Chop around 3 gloves garlic, and a piece of ginger into strips.

4)Chop around 2 or 3 spring onions diagonally into long strips possible.

Chopping spring onions

Cooking:

1) In a heated wok, (the fire is very strong), pour in around 3 tablespoons of oil, and add in chopped garlic and ginger strips, then 1 teaspoon of cooking wine.

Stir frying the garlic

2) The smell of the garlic, ginger and wine comes out, add in the lamb slice, stir fry quickly.

3) When the colour of the lamb slice turns into ‘white’, add in chopped spring onion.

4) Add in a bit more salt and cumin seed ONLY IF it is needed (if you think the taste is not strong enough).

----- Done!

Chinese stir fried lamb with spring onion

It does need to be eaten while it is still hot, so you don’t get much of ‘lamb’ smell, and the meat is still very tender. Oh, don’t fry too long, otherwise, the meat might be harder, so chopping it thin is very important.

I think it is good to go with plain boiled rice, so you can have a better taste of lamb. :)

Spring onion, ginger and garlic in Chinese cuisine

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Spring onion, ginger and garlic in Chinese cooking

Another common way of stir-frying Northeast Chinese dishes is using the taste of spring onions, ginger and garlic to influence the dishes. If you get into any household in North China, you can easily find these three items on the kitchen shelves. Nowadays, people can buy the fresh vegetables in the market whole year long, but before, twenty years or thirty years ago, in winter, because of the very cold weather in North China (-30˚c the coldest :0), it was difficult to find fresh seasonal vegetables apart from winter grows. So most families would stock up some vegetables including lots of ‘big spring onions’. (They look similar to leeks, but taste is more like spring onions, easy to stock than small spring onions.)

Anyway, with the strong and distinguish taste of these three items, they are the nature ingredients comparing those powders in little jars. :)) Normally, they are well chopped, and put into heated oil, wait until the smell comes out, (at this point, the oil is flavored as well), put the rest of food in for stir-frying.

However, the way they influence the dishes depends on when you put them in. For instance, if you put the spring onion at the very beginning (in heated oil), the flavor would influence the whole dish (in this case, normally it is the part of the white stem being used);  if you put it in when you finish or almost finish the cooking, then the freshness and sharp smell of the spring onion will not be mixed into the dish, but remain ons the top (in this case, it is the green part of the spring onion used). … Am I talking sense?

Almost every dish can have these three items in for enriching the flavor, but personally, I like to have garlic with green vegetables, spring onion with light stir-fried the dish, and ginger with fish and meat dishes. :)