I haven’t been able to write a new post for almost a week because I was in bed with a pretty bad case of the flu 😦 This has been my longest time without a post since I started blogging.

Making your own Peking Duck turned out to be quite simple, and so is making your own pancakes to eat it with! I found this recipe on Christine’s Recipes. Making these pancakes from scratch is easy. A good tip in the recipe is to roll out two pancakes on top of each other, as this makes it easier to make them very thin.

Of course you can also buy pancakes for Peking Duck, but making your own from scratch is more satisfying and you get to decide what goes in them. And that is in fact very little: flour, water, and just a tiny bit of salt and oil.

Ingredients

Makes 8 pancakes

200 grams (1 1/4 cups) flour

150 ml (scant 2/3 cup) hot water (just off the boil)

2-3 Tbsp cold water

pinch of salt (optional)

sesame oil for brushing

Preparation

Sieve the flour and mix in a bit of salt.

Drizzle on the hot water evenly.

Mix with a fork (or chopsticks).

Knead in as much cold water as needed to make it come together, but not too much as you are looking for a moist but not sticky dough.

Knead until the dough is smooth. It should be moist but not sticky. Cover with plastic wrap (or a damp cloth) and let it rest for at least 20 minutes at room temperature to let the dough relax. This will make it easier to roll out the pancakes. If the dough is still very ‘stretchy’ when you try to roll it out, the pancakes will keep contracting and won’t become thin.

Divide the dough into 8 equal pieces.

Keep the dough pieces under a moist cloth to prevent them from drying out.

Flatten two pieces of dough into discs and brush lightly with sesame oil.

Stack the two discs on top of each other, with the oiled sides touching.

Roll out with a rolling pin.

Roll out thinly to a diameter of about 15 cm (6″).

Heat a non-stick frying pan. Put in the double pancake and fry in a dry pan for a minute or so.

Turn it around as soon as some golden spots have appeared. Fry the other side similarly.

Now it will be easy to separate the two pancakes.

Finish frying on the final side, again until golden spots appear. Repeat until you have used up all the dough.

The pan should remain hot enough during this process to cook the pancakes quickly without drying them out. You are looking for supple pancakes to stuff with peking ducks, not crispy or tough pancakes. On the other hand the pan should not be so hot that you get burned spots rather than golden.

You can serve the pancakes straight away, or heat them up in a steamer or by nuking a stack of pancakes that has been wrapped in a damp cloth in the microwave oven.