jianbing

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As a variation on our beloved theme of the Tianjin-style egg crepe jianbing, I’ll post an ode to jianbing‘s cousin, the jidan guanbing (鸡蛋灌饼), also roughly translated as egg crepe. Both are fantastic for late-night munchies or more traditionally, a quick on-the-go breakfast. As we’ve lovingly recorded in past posts, the jianbing is a hefty sandwich-sized crepe filled with egg, a deep-fried crisp and assorted green bits. The guanbing is a less glamourous creature, a dough pocket with an egg poured into the center (the term guan 灌 means “to pour”). It’s smaller, about the size of a pancake, and the oily crisp is replaced by some healthy lettuce (though it can be argued there is nothing healthy about a greasy guanbing).

As the humble, runty cousin of the glorious jianbing, it doesn’t get much notice. However, in Suzhou off the west gate of the university, I met a guanbing genius.… READ MORE | 2 Comments

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Our love and near-obsession with the jianbing is well documented (for a total of six posts on this one simple street food). We’ve made the pilgrimage to Tianjin, birthplace of the jianbing, we’ve pestered numerous jianbing vendors around Beijing for tips, and of course, we’ve discussed amongst ourselves the ins and outs of how to make the magic happen in our tiny, crepe griddle-less kitchens.

We even contemplated the brilliant (we thought) idea of renting our Tsinghua jianbing vendor’s cart for the day to get some practice, learn a few tricks of the trade, and hopefully bag a few kuai in profits. However, seeing as she thinks we are one and the same person, we thought it might try her sanity to show up together with our odd little proposal – and one should never mess with the sanity of the woman who provides one’s daily breakfast.… READ MORE | 22 Comments

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In Chen Kaige’s Forever Enthralled, the biopic on the dan performer Mei Lanfang, Mei’s children are welcomed after they escape from wartime Beijing with a ribbon-wrapped cake.  His patron greets them with, “There may not be jianbing guozi in Shanghai, but there are cakes!”  What an awful trade-off.  But you know it’s bad when you start collecting references to jianbing.

This is just to say that one tries to avoid the difficult matter at hand, or the batter of the jianbing.… READ MORE | 7 Comments

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When devouring a jianbing, the biggest question usually is – just what is that crispy thing in the middle? In Tianjin guozi (果子) is used – usually translated as a Chinese doughnut (youtiao 油条) – but the youtiao recipes were very intimidating.  Plus you need a large vat of oil to properly fry the doughnut, leaving youtiao up to the professionals, methinks.

Lucky for us, we quizzed our favorite jianbing vendor at the east gate of Tsinghua University and discovered jianbing crisps are much easier. She proudly displays a little handwritten sign on the side of her cart: “Self-fried fritter (zizha baocui 自 炸薄脆).”  How does one create a fritter?  Her answer: she goes to a wonton wrapper vendor, who cuts extra-large wonton skins for her.  She heats up super-hot oil then lightly drops the wrapper on the oil (“就烫一下”), whereupon it bursts into this lovely, airy confection.… READ MORE | 12 Comments

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Sauces

Tianjin is the birthplace of jianbing, but here in Beijing there is no shortage of this street food. In researching how to make our own version of this street snack, we are shamelessly eating jianbing as we see fit (which is often).

This stand outside the Wukesong Photographic Equipment Center appealed because 1) this Beijing variation was fragrant with toasted black sesame seeds sprinkled on top, and 2) they were enormous. For 2.3RMB (40 cents) we got this one-pounder, two-egg jianbing monster that pretty much served as breakfast, lunch, and at least half of dinner.

Here is the step-by-step birthing of a jianbing.

1. A crepe-like batter is spread over a… READ MORE | 13 Comments

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Most people do not think of Tianjin as a tourist destination, but I went recently and loved it. First, you get to be harmonized (hexie‘d 和谐) on the express train, and the female attendants wear luxurious red wool pillbox hats decorated with the party emblem. Secondly, Tianjin is the birthplace of the egg crepe/pancake (jianbing 煎饼), known as jianbing guozi 煎饼果子 there.

Imagine if Jean-Georges Vongerichten, in this passage from a New York Times travel piece by R.W. Apple and requoted in Evan Osnos’s New Yorker blog, had eaten his jianbing in Tianjin instead of Shanghai (which indubitably is NOT the birthplace of jianbing).

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