Dan Bing-Scallion Pancake..mmm~

Scallion pancake is a simple blend of ground green bean flour, topped with one egg, fresh scallions, coriander, hot bean paste, sweet noodle sauce and a fried dough rectangle, pan-fried to a delectable crunchiness -- are sold by street vendors throughout Shanghai in China for around 2-3 yuan RMB.

It is safe to say that I live on the Dan Bing.

My love affair with this wonderful food started last August when I first arrived in Shanghai. One morning, while eating breakfast with other AATIC participants in our hotel, one of the group sat down at the table with some food that he had bought on the street. Between crunches he mumbled, 'Breakfast Burrito' and I had no clue as to what those words would mean to me. It was another few weeks before I actually tried my first breakfast burrito. One morning, on the advice of Kip and Laura, I ventured down and across the backstreet looking for someone cooking dough on top of a empty 55 gallon drum. To make the ji dan bing, a short-order wizard spread batter on a drum-shaped grill with what looked like a painter's spatula, broke an egg on top, added a dab of fermented soybean sauce and threw in some chives, coriander and mustard-plant leaves. The whole process took just a minute. Then he slapped either a salty cruller called you tiao or a piece of crisply fried bean curd skin across the finished product and rolled it up like a scroll. Mr. Vongerichten, in seventh heaven, pronounced it "the best breakfast in the world."

Dan bing is a generic term for any round flour based food that uses an egg. At the school cafeteria at SHUFE you can buy a Dan Bing that is basically fried bread with a fried egg on top. The NYTimes.com article describes a northern style Dan Bing but there is also a southern style Dan Bing which is very different.

The northern style Dan Bing is fairly dry and crisp and less heavy than the southern style. The southern style uses a thinner batter, usually includes peanuts, and a paste of pepper flakes brushed on rather than pepper flakes spread across with a spoon.

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