Week 1: Recipe 2: Scallion Pancakes with Sesame Seeds and Hoisin Sauce

The 52 New Recipes in a Year challenge was originally meant as an easy challenge to try one new recipe each week for a whole year, but I can't stay out of the kitchen so I'm running ahead a bit. Today I tried the scallion pancakes with sesame seeds and hoisin sauce.

I was really looking forward to these because they are savoury and different from the sweet bite pancakes usually are. They didn't turn out quite like I expected, though. It'd be an overstatement to say they were a disappointment, but an extra teaspoon of salt would have done the scallions better justice. The hoisin sauce serves as a salty-sweet syrupy dip sauce, and is very strong of flavour, perhaps a compensation for the debatable blandness of the pancakes. Still, I'd have these for lunch again, but without the hoisin and with an extra scoop of sesame seeds.

The original recipe (serves 4):

Ingredients:

• 3 tbsp sesame seeds
• 4 tbsp hoisin sauce
• 2 tbsp sesame oil
• 200 grams of flour
• 1 tbsp of corn starch
• 1 egg
• 6 scallions (sliced)
• 4 tbsp nut oil
• half a teaspoon of salt 
• 400 ml of water

Directions:

1. Heat a skillet without oil or butter and roast sesame seeds for 3 minutes. Meanwhile, mix the hoisin and the sesame oil for the dip sauce.
2. Whisk flour, corn starch, egg, sesame seeds, two-thirds of the scallions, the salt, and the water. 
3. Heat nut oil in a small skillet and pour in about one ladle of the batter. Cook for 6 minutes, flip over after 3. Repeat with the rest of the batter. Garnish with the rest of the scallions and serve with the hoisin dip.