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Back in December when I did the whirlwind tour of China, on the first night we were in Beijing, we at at a Sichuan place whose name I meant to catch (because the food was outstanding) but had a ridiculous amount of the distilled sake they serve as an accompaniment to important meals, and was fortunate to be standing upright, much less remembering names. Obviously, the meal was meant to impress with its extravagance, but there was one very simple item on the menu that I thought would be simple to duplicate when I got back home, and could find in a Chinese cookbook or something.
They brought out a basket full of little crispy sesame-seed coated pitas (I'm using the vernacular at the moment--official names come later), that you split open and filled with a pork-and-chive (and who knows what spices) mixture and ate like a Krystal (or White Castle, for those who like their burger establishments not hawked by Samuel L. Jackson) burger--a couple of bites and you're busy putting together the ingredients for the next one. Courtesy and the vast quantity of different foods available meant that we were eating one or two of these apiece, but several of the Americans at the table lost all sense of decorum and ate six or seven. I think I stopped at three.
"Should be easy to find on the internet," I thought to myself after my return, and with that, I commenced to the grand Google: Pork Sesame Bun. Pork Sesame Roll. Pork Sesame Pancake. Pork Sesame Cake. Pork Sesame Beijing. Pork Sesame Sichuan. Pork Sesame Schezuan. A couple of "What to eat in Beijing" sites get me the Romanji version of the official name--Rou Mo Shao Bing--which leads to a half-dozen pages of "Rou Mo Shao Bing is meat in a sesame pancake, Empress of China's breakfast etc." and no idea how to make it, or where to find in the States. I found one recipe for shao bing (that's the bun/cake/bread), from Ming Tsai, and it has two different leaveners, and needs to be assembled in the most ridiculous fashion imaginable, which can be normal for Chinese food, but seems a little out of place for what's essentially a pita.
So I turn to the grand wisdom of the internets. Anyone else ever have these? More importantly, anyone have a recipe? I've not yet gotten the level of overcoming general shyness and asking a total stranger in a Chinese restaurant whose ethnicity I might get wrong, and who might not have familiarity with the food in question, but if it comes to that the first one will be the worst one, in terms of embarrassment. Still, total strangers on the internet are more approachable. Help a fella out?
They brought out a basket full of little crispy sesame-seed coated pitas (I'm using the vernacular at the moment--official names come later), that you split open and filled with a pork-and-chive (and who knows what spices) mixture and ate like a Krystal (or White Castle, for those who like their burger establishments not hawked by Samuel L. Jackson) burger--a couple of bites and you're busy putting together the ingredients for the next one. Courtesy and the vast quantity of different foods available meant that we were eating one or two of these apiece, but several of the Americans at the table lost all sense of decorum and ate six or seven. I think I stopped at three.
"Should be easy to find on the internet," I thought to myself after my return, and with that, I commenced to the grand Google: Pork Sesame Bun. Pork Sesame Roll. Pork Sesame Pancake. Pork Sesame Cake. Pork Sesame Beijing. Pork Sesame Sichuan. Pork Sesame Schezuan. A couple of "What to eat in Beijing" sites get me the Romanji version of the official name--Rou Mo Shao Bing--which leads to a half-dozen pages of "Rou Mo Shao Bing is meat in a sesame pancake, Empress of China's breakfast etc." and no idea how to make it, or where to find in the States. I found one recipe for shao bing (that's the bun/cake/bread), from Ming Tsai, and it has two different leaveners, and needs to be assembled in the most ridiculous fashion imaginable, which can be normal for Chinese food, but seems a little out of place for what's essentially a pita.
So I turn to the grand wisdom of the internets. Anyone else ever have these? More importantly, anyone have a recipe? I've not yet gotten the level of overcoming general shyness and asking a total stranger in a Chinese restaurant whose ethnicity I might get wrong, and who might not have familiarity with the food in question, but if it comes to that the first one will be the worst one, in terms of embarrassment. Still, total strangers on the internet are more approachable. Help a fella out?
