Family Fridays #6

It's that time of the week again! Family Fridays! Today, Jocelyn from Speaking Of China is sharing one of her family recipes with us. 

I grew up in a very white, very middle-class suburb of Cleveland, Ohio – and the last thing I ever expected was to end up in China, married to a guy from Hangzhou. Yet now that I’m here, I can’t imagine things any other way, especially since I’ve learned so much from my husband’s mother about how to prepare amazing and authentic Chinese food. (Thank goodness I married a guy with an amazing cook for a mom!)One of the coolest things about my mother-in-law is that she’s totally accepting of my vegan lifestyle. I never expected that a woman who grew up in Hangzhou’s mountainous countryside – where people tend to be pretty traditional when it comes to food – would embrace my dietary needs. But she does. Maybe it’s because the two of us have really bonded over food. I love asking her about her secrets for, say, crispy tofu or spicy pickled daikon radish. But when I discovered that one of the local snack foods was shaobing, a fried flatbread stuffed with savory salted veggies and then pan-fried until crispy, I knew I had to learn how to make it myself!Most shaobing include bacon-like bits of fatty pork, making the food typically off-limits to vegans like me. But thanks to my mother-in-law, I’ve learned an amazing recipe for vegan shaobing. It’s even a little reminiscent of pizza back from home, so much so that I often jokingly call it “Chinese pizza”.Vegan-Style Chinese Shaobing (Stuffed Flatbread)Ingredients:FlourWaterSaltOnionsA salted, pickled, smoked or dried vegetable of your choice (My mother-in-law uses salted bamboo; pickled mustard tubers also work well.)Cold-pressed canola oil (or other oil of choice)Directions:Mince the onions and your salted vegetable of choice. Then mix them together with a spoonful or two of oil. (They should not be too oily – just enough to bind them together.) If the mixture is not salty enough for you, add salt to taste. (Note: There should be a half-half mixture of the onions and the salted veggie.)Pour flour into a bowl and add in just enough water to make dough that you can knead without having it stick to your hands. On a cutting board surface, knead the dough until it is elastic, shiny, smooth and without lumps.Roll the dough into a roll with a diameter of about four inches. Then, at about two-inch intervals, cut the dough with a knife into rounds.Cradle the rounds in the palm of your hand, and using your fingers create a bowl-like crater. (Note: don’t make this too thin – the edges should still be around a half-inch thick.) Stuff it with the vegetable mix, then pull the edges of the dough over the top to seal it inside.Place the stuffed rounds on a floured surface. Using your hand, press down first in the center of the dough, then out to the edges. Keep flipping it over and repeating this process, making sure to shape it into a circle, until it’s thin enough to roll out.Using a rolling pin, roll the dough from the center to the edges applying medium pressure. Flip it over and repeat. Keep flipping and rolling out the round until the edges are very thin. (Note: the vegetable filling may occasionally poke holes through the round; this is expected with this type of flatbread and doesn’t affect the final product.)Heat a spoonful of oil in a non-stick pan or wok over medium heat. Add the flatbread, cooking it until it no longer sticks to the pan and is crispy and slightly browned (about 1 and a half to two minutes.) Flip and repeat for other side.Once done, cut the flatbread into four pieces and serve immediately.Connect with Jocelyn on Facebook and Twitter!If you would like to share a recipe, please check out my submission page for more information.