Yolanda, what are we making today?
Awesome.
Meet Yolanda.
She’s from Beijing.
Inspired by the flavors of her childhood,
in 2015, Yolanda opened up a jianbing food truck
in New York City called Flying Pig.
When you were growing up in Beijing,
was this very common?
On the streets?
Yeah, it’s harder to find.
Jianbing has been around in Tianjin for 600 years,
and the city is so proud of it that in 2018,
they launched a rubric with instructions
on what an official jianbing should look like.
Here’s how she makes them.
Traditionally, a pure mung bean-based batter
is used to make the crepe.
Does that make a difference in the texture?
I see.
Yours is primarily wheat and mung bean flour?
Okay.
And is it one egg per jianbing?
So the egg is kind of the glue that
holds this whole thing together.
It’s then brushed with a secret sauce
that’s basically a combination of a sweet bean sauce
and fermented bean paste.
She adds some scallions, cilantro, and this piece of fried dough,
which is called baocui in Chinese.
Now, that’s usually it for a traditional jianbing,
but Yolanda takes her pancakes a couple steps further.
In this version, she adds lettuce and a delicious slab of pork.
And this version has crayfish,
a summer staple in China.
Flying Pig was considered one of the first jianbing vendors
in New York City.
Today, the northern Chinese street snack is a common sight
in not only New York,
but California and Texas as well.
And the variations are endless.
So Yolanda's version of jianbing was actually really, really good.
I'm not used to having crayfish or braised pork in a jianbing,
but that was a really amazing addition.
To be honest, before going up there to northern China,
I didn't know that much about northern Chinese food.
But I actually really like it,
and we're going to be rolling out more stories
on food from Beijing and Tianjin.
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