Shanghainese Red Bean Pancakes

With a tub of red bean paste in my fridge (made by Ming, she makes great tiramisu too!), Shanghainese red bean pancakes seem to be the the best way to use it. Being part of the bloodline of the Shanghainese, I guess it was only justifiable for me to know at least one dish out of my own heritage, that would certainly make my grandfather proud although he is no longer around. So I set out to find an easy recipe for the pancake batter, it has to be a thin batter in order for the pancake to be crispy. And I did find one, the batter was really easy to make, simply mix:

crispy pancake batter

120g flour

250ml water

30ml oil

1 egg

it turn out to be quite a runny batter, so if you are trying out this as well, do not panic if the batter seems kind of thin. oil a flat pan using a kitchen towel, this absorbs any extra oil, there is no need to use much as oil has already been incorporated into the batter itself. use a small medium fire, wait for the pan to heat up, scoop a spoonful of the batter and pour it into the pan, twirling the pan to spread the batter, this will create a thin crepe-like pancake, wait for the pancake to set before flipping it over, and in less than 30s, it's done. place a spoonful of the red bean onto the pancake, flatten the paste so that you can wrap it up into a rectangular shape. my advice is not to be greedy and place too much paste which i have done to a number of them of my pancakes as this may 1) cause the thin pancake to tear while wrapping, 2) it may be harder to crisp when frying later, 3) it gets kind of "jelat" which actually means there is too much of something.

i tried out 2 methods of frying the red bean pancake, pan-frying and deep-frying. personally, i prefer the deep-frying method as the pancake skin is crispy throughout but the pan-frying method is not bad too, leaving parts of the pancake soft and chewy. after frying, it is best to eat it immediately while the pancake is still hot and crispy.

as i bite into the pancake, the pancake skin splits apart due to its crispiness, spilling out the savory red bean fillings, sweetness fills my mouth and one is barley enough.

method: pan-fried

method: deep-fried