Cong you bing [Green Onion Flatbread]

I confess, I’ve been wanting to do this post ever since my friend Laurel remarked on this Hong Kong-manufactured warming liniment called Po Sum On–which is no joke or mispronunciation but which actually means “Protect the heart’s peace.” An oil used to treat muscle and joint aches with that sort of double entendre? Too good to be true.

“Cong you bing some green onions from the market today?” I ask Verne, who of course has no idea what I am talking about. “Cong you what??” he answers, and proceeds to explain that “bing” is bread in Mandarin, qualified by the preceding words which tell just sort of bing it is: Fa mian bing is yeast-risen bing, Laobing is pan-fried bing and so on. 

Me, I wish “Cong you bing” had had some more inspiring meaning beyond the literal “green onion pancake”–something like “path to happiness” or “feeling of a rainy morning.” But no such luck. It’s not even really a pancake, as it’s made with dough instead of batter. I’m left to my own (bad) punning devices.

Sometimes I think that, as an ethnographer, I really should be above such jokes, but I’ve long since learned not to take even culture that seriously. We’ve grown up with such irreverence after all; it is its own sort of cultural reality. And irreverence and word play have their place, even when directed at cultures not our own. Not strictly anyway, though my kitchen is in Pondicherry and my recipes anything but.

An Indian architect was invited to the naming of a new building in Japan, goes a joke my uncle used to tell. On reaching he was shocked to find it structurally unsound, but had no way of communicating this to his hosts. “What name have you chosen for this?” they asked, enthusiastically. The Indian architect paused. “Nikkumo Nikado,” he said. [The humor lying in the fact that this is Tamil for “will it stand or will it not?” enunciated with appropriately Japanese inflections.] 

Tamilians mark such jokes as “mokkai”: literally, blunt humor that deserves not more, not less, than a quick guffaw–and a move right along.

Cong you bing is what the pâtissiers would call a laminated pastry, not much different in principle from the classic croissant: breads leavened with the aid of fats (which keep layers from sticking), and steam (which always rises). But it’s less fatty by far than your average croissant and ready in a wink. It’s also not really a pancake, except perhaps in literal translation. It’s more of a flatbread, of the cong you bing to the table in a pre-dinner bread basket (sorry), or a simple-to-fix variant on an Indian paratha.

Here’s how the cong you bing happens.

1. Rinse off your scallions, and take time to admire them. Aren’t they gorgeous?

2. Mince the green leaves right down to their pink-white fleshy ends. [You could well also use garlic chives in place of scallions.]

3. Use boiling hot water to prepare your dough. You want the gluteney-stretch of dough, but not so much that it keeps springing back on you. Working with hot water apparently denatures the gluten (which is a protein, after all), allowing you to work with it much more easily.

4. Let this dough rest for an hour, covered with a moist towel. At this stage, you could also let it sit in the fridge until you need it–probably not longer than a day or a night, though. Then roll it into a rope, and divide into four bits. (You could subdivide more if you feel the pieces are too large–but there’s merit to keeping the dough balls large, as you’ll see while rolling.) Now’s also a good time to get your griddle nice and hot over a medium-high flame.

5. Keeping the other bits covered, roll one piece out into a round. Brush with oil, sprinkle with sesame seeds and a small handful of green onion, and roll into a cigar. [You could, if you want an assurance of flakiness and have the time, add only sesame seeds at this stage, complete steps 6 and 7 below, and then repeat the rolling process, this time filling with minced scallion.]

6. Now roll your cigar again, sideways, into this cute little escargot-like shape.

7. Make sure the end is tucked well and under, and gently roll this guy out into another round. [If you’ve not added your scallions yet, go back to step 5 at this point.] Here’s where you see that having a thick round helps keeps the scallion bits in place, and the dough circle intact. Too little dough, and it’s harder to incorporate more of the green onion.

8. Grease your griddle lightly, keeping the flame on medium-high, and place the uncooked cong you rolled on it <>. Brush with more oil on top.

9. After about a minute, flip it over. You don’t need more grease at this stage, but you can add a few drops to the sides if you like. Press gently on top with your spatula to encourage the bit of puffing that happens. Continue like this until both sides are nicely browned and the cong you bing is slightly puffy.

10. Cut into triangles with a pizza-cutter, and serve the flatbread hot, in a bread basket, or as I had it — with a thick, cold yogurt mixed with a wee bit of minced garlic. Snack’s up–bing!