Marinated Chicken with Scallion Pancakes

We made this a couple nights ago and I wasn’t going to post about it… but it is one of my favorite things to make, and I have a full cup of coffee in front of me and am in the mood for a good ramble, so here goes…

Back in Santa Barbara as a grad student living in near-poverty, I had this epiphany that there are places called “libraries” where they will actually give you books for free as long as you promise to bring them back later. I was running out of both shelf space for cookbooks and money with which to purchase them when I wandered into the cookbook section (good ol’ 641 in the Dewey decimal system) at the Santa Barbara library. I sat on the floor in the 641 aisle for over an hour that day poring over the books and trying to decide which ones would come home with me. I don’t remember 11 of the 12 books that I brought home that day, but the one I remember clearly is Flavors by Donna Hay.
For me, there are two types of cookbooks that I absolutely love: those that make you want to sit down with a glass of wine and read them cover to cover like a novel (most books by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid fall into this category, as well as the fabulous A Return to Cooking by Eric Ripert and Michael Ruhlman), and those that don’t ask you to do any reading whatsoever as they present you with gorgeous pictures of each and every dish and minimal verbiage (which tends to be any book photographed by Petrina Tinslay). When I first opened Flavors (my first-ever Donna Hay book*), it was the most brilliant cookbook I had ever seen… Recipes consist of a short ingredient list followed by only the briefest of instructions (not great for people who aren’t comfortable in the kitchen, but perfect for people looking primarily for a bit of inspiration) accompanied by a beautiful picture. Instead of reading through recipes trying to decide what might taste good, you can simply flip through the pictures until one makes you say “Ooh! I want to eat THAT!”

This is all my long-winded way of getting around to the fact that the very first recipe I ever tried from the very first Donna Hay cookbook I ever saw was Hoisin Chicken with Green Onion Pancakes. I’ve been making some version of this for probably about 6 years now, and a lot has changed in terms of the chicken and condiments that I use, but those pancakes are absolutely fantastic. Below is a rough approximation of the meal I tend to make with them. (The marinade I usually use is “throw a bunch of Asian-ish stuff in a bag until it tastes right, then add chicken,” but I tried to quantify it a bit better here…)

Marinated Chicken with Scallion Pancakes

   1/4 C Hoisin sauce
   1/4 C soy sauce
   2 T honey (or brown sugar, depending on your mood)
   1-3 T finely grated ginger
   2-4 garlic cloves, minced
   1-2 T Asian chili-garlic sauce
   1 T toasted sesame oil
   2kg boneless, skinless chicken thighs

   1 English cucumber, cut 1-inch segments then julienned
   6-10 scallions, finely sliced
   Hoisin, for serving
   Sriracha (or other delicious hot sauce), for serving
   1 batch of Donna Hay’s Scallion Pancakes (recipe below)

Combine the first 7 ingredients (Hoisin through sesame oil). Season with salt, pepper, and/or any of those 7 ingredients to taste, then add the chicken. Marinate for several hours or (ideally) overnight.

Preheat a gas grill.** Remove chicken from marinade and grill until just cooked through. Allow to rest, then slice into roughly bite-sized pieces. Prepare the pancakes while the chicken cooks and rests. You should now have a counter of ingredients looking something like this (only with Sriracha instead of random delicious hot sauce purchased in Dubai):
Assemble the pancake wraps to your taste (I tend to go with Hoisin, hot sauce, a handful of chicken, some cucumber, lots of scallions, then more Hoisin and hot sauce as needed…) and enjoy.

Serves 4.


Donna Hay’s Scallion Pancakes

   1 C all-purpose flour
   1/2 C rice flour
   3 eggs
   1 1/2 C milk
   Pinch of sea salt
   1 T sesame oil
   6 scallions, thinly sliced

Combine flour, rice flour, eggs, milk, salt, and sesame oil in a bowl and whisk until smooth. Add additional milk or flour if needed to get a thin crepe-batter-like consistency. Stir in the scallions.

Spray a sauté pan with oil and place over medium-high heat. (Or, if you don’t have sprayable oil, drizzle a small amount of oil in the pan and wipe with a paper towel to leave only a light coating.) Add about 1/3 C of the batter to the pan and swirl the pan a bit to spread the batter thinly. Cook for about 2 minutes on each side or until lightly browned. The top will look mostly dry, possibly with a few small popped air bubbles, when it’s time for to flip the pancake the first time. (It usually takes an imperfect pancake or two before you get a feel for the best temperature for the stovetop and the right amount of oil.) Depending on your pan, you will need to reapply oil after every 1 or 2 pancakes.

Makes about 8 or 9 pancakes. Keep the pancakes warm (e.g. covered with a tea towel on a plate in a low oven) until ready to serve.

*I now own 7 of Donna Hay’s books (including Flavors) and subscribed to her magazine for two years when I lived in Melbourne, so it turns out that money-saving trip to the library was actually quite expensive in the end…

**Again, this can be done under the broiler in your oven if you don’t have a gas grill at your disposal.