This week marks nine years since Meera Sodha started writing this column, and she notes that there is still much to discover about Asian cuisine. For instance, while Cantonese and Sichuan food are well-known, regional cuisines like Fujian or Hunanese remain largely unexplored. Today's offering is a simple vegetable pancake made with courgette, known as hutazi, straight from Beijing homes, embellished with hot and sweet cucumbers.
Ingredients and preparation
The recipe serves four and requires about 15 minutes of prep time and 40 minutes of cooking. For the pancakes, you will need two courgettes (about 550g), coarsely grated, 1¼ tsp fine sea salt, four medium eggs, 120g plain flour, 50g spring onion greens and whites finely sliced, ½ tsp Chinese five-spice, ½ tbsp toasted sesame oil, and rapeseed oil for frying. For the cucumber salad, you need 1 tbsp rice vinegar, 2 tsp light soy sauce, 2 tsp sambal oelek, 2 tsp runny honey, ½ tbsp toasted sesame oil, one cucumber (about 300g) deseeded and cut into 1cm dice, 15g coriander rolled and finely sliced, and 1 tbsp good runny tahini.
Step-by-step instructions
Start by putting the grated courgettes in a large bowl with a teaspoon of salt, mix well, then tip into a sieve set over the same bowl to drain for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, make the salad by whisking together rice vinegar, soy sauce, sambal oelek, honey, and half a tablespoon of sesame oil in a medium bowl. Add the cucumber, mix well to coat, then fold in the coriander. Drizzle over the tahini and gently weave it through the salad without mixing it in. Set aside.
After 10 minutes, use clean hands to press the water out of the courgettes vigorously. Measure out 100ml of the courgette water and discard the rest. Return the courgettes to the bowl, then add eggs, flour, spring onions, five-spice, half a tablespoon of sesame oil, and a quarter-teaspoon of salt. Add 75ml of the reserved courgette water and mix well to make a loose pancake batter; add more water a tablespoon at a time if needed to loosen the mix.
Cooking the pancakes
Put three tablespoons of oil in a nonstick frying pan on a medium-high heat. When hot, add a ladle of batter (about 75ml). Depending on pan size, add one or two more separate ladles, then pat down each pancake and cook for about three minutes total, flipping once halfway, until golden brown on both sides. Lift cooked pancakes onto a plate and repeat with remaining batter—you should end up with eight or nine pancakes.
Serving suggestion
Distribute the pancakes between four plates, spoon the hot honey cucumbers on top, and serve.
