Making a jiān bing

As I witter on about often on this blog, I love Chinese street food. One of the things I would like to do, is get as much information about it as possible so that should one day it no longer be available to me, I can try and make it myself. Or at least approximate it in some way, with a feeling of authenticity :-)

I originally took a video of someone making one of these jiān bing (煎饼), but each vendor does it a little bit differently, and thinking about it pictures are less bandwidth and more instructive.

The first step is to spread the batter layer (probably just flour and water). I don't have enough chinese to ask about ingredients, although since I know the words for flour and water, I could probably ask if that was all it was. Anyway, the next step when it is no longer wet is to break an egg over it and spread that as another layer over the first.

Then when that is spread, the first herb which I believe is coriander is sprinkled over.

And after that, the second herb which I believe is green onion is sprinkled over.

Next, the third herb (?) which is definitely pre-cooked garlic is sprinkled.

Then the "pancake" is scraped off the hot plate.

Until it can be folded over, and then the last half is scraped off the hot plate.

A small amount of chilli paste is dropped on top, and then brown paste is smeared with the chilli paste and the result is smeared over the surface of the folded pancake.

The crispy wafer is snapped in half, and placed in the "inner" part of the half-circle folded pancake.

The package is then wrapped up around the wafer, making a closed package out of itself.

Cut in half, to make two open sandwich-like sections.

Folded against each other, and placed in a bag open ends facing out ready to eat.

The price with my jiān bing guy has gone up. At 2 kuai 5 mao, he was pretty much as cheap as it gets and with one of the better products around. Now that he is back from Spring Festival, like as for other goods in China, his prices have gone up. So, 3 kuai it is now.