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4 hours ago
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This week marks nine years since I started writing this column, and here’s something I’m excited by: that we’ve only just scratched the surface when it comes to our collective knowledge about Asian cuisine. When it comes to Chinese food, for example, we might know a fair bit about, for example, Cantonese or Sichuan food, but what about Fujian or Hunanese? There are still so many riches to discover and excellent meals to be had. Today’s offering is a small token in that vein: a simple vegetable pancake made with courgette, known as hutazi and straight from the homes of Beijing. I’ve taken the liberty of embellishing it with some hot and sweet cucumbers.
Beijing-style courgette pancakes with hot honey cucumbers
Sambal oelek is one of my favourite ingredients – it’s a bright chilli condiment made from chillies and salt (and sometimes vinegar) that originates in Indonesia, and I use it a lot – see here and here and here for just a few examples. It’s available in some larger supermarkets, in Asian food stores and online.
Prep 15 min
Cook 40 min
Serves 4
For the pancakes
2 courgettes (about 550g), coarsely grated
1¼ tsp fine sea salt
4 medium eggs
120g plain flour
50g spring onion greens and whites, finely sliced
½ tsp Chinese five-spice
½ tbsp toasted sesame oil
Rapeseed oil
For the cucumber salad
1 tbsp rice vinegar
2 tsp light soy sauce
2 tsp sambal oelek
2 tsp runny honey
½ tbsp toasted sesame oil
1 cucumber (about 300g), deseeded and cut into 1cm dice
15g coriander, rolled and finely sliced
1 tbsp good runny tahini
Put the grated courgettes in a large bowl with a teaspoon of salt, mix well, then tip into a sieve and set over the same bowl to drain for 10 minutes.
In the meantime, make the salad. Put the rice vinegar, soy sauce, sambal oelek, honey and half a tablespoon of sesame oil in a medium bowl and whisk to combine. Add the cucumber, mix well to coat, then fold in the coriander. Drizzle over the tahini, gently weave it through the salad, but do not mix it in. Put the salad to one side.
After the courgettes have had 10 minutes, use clean hands to press the water out of them quite vigorously. Measure out 100ml of the courgette water, and discard the rest. Return the courgettes to the bowl, then add the eggs, flour, spring onions, five-spice, half a tablespoon of sesame oil and a quarter-teaspoon of salt. Add 75ml of the reserved courgette water and mix well to make a loose pancake batter; if need be, add more of the reserved water a tablespoon at a time to loosen the mix (you may not need any or all of it).
Put three tablespoons of oil in a nonstick frying pan on a medium-high heat and, when it’s hot, add a ladle of the batter (I used a 75ml measure). Depending on the size of your pan, add one or two more separate ladles, then pat down each pancake and cook for about three minutes in total, flipping them once halfway, until golden brown on both sides. Lift the cooked pancakes on to a plate and repeat with the remaining batter until it’s all used up – you should end up with eight or nine pancakes.
Distribute the pancakes between four plates, spoon the hot honey cucumbers on top and serve.
