Chapter 36: Best-Smelling Pancakes
Ye Xiaoxian put her hand to making pancakes without delay. After she had done making the dough, she squashed walnuts and groundnut kernels. She then grounded the pork and stir-fried the sesame.
She meant to make pancakes but due to the limited conditions, she decided to make flatbread instead.
The difference between pancakes and flatbread is that the former is baked in an oven, and the latter can be baked directly on the iron pan.
Pancakes for Ye Xiaoxian were like ABCs. The pancakes she was going to make were the famous snacks in a certain province that she ever learned just after attending the chef training. Tourists would line up to buy this kind of flatbread when they went there traveling. She has made them several times when she was craving for some, and the one she made tasted very similar to the snack sold in the traveling spot.
When the sun went down, Ye Xiaoxian’s dough was ready, and she went to make a fire.
In this family they used iron wok and burned dry firewood, which would be a great test of her skills, so Ye Xiaoxian didn’t ask Li Hongmei and Xiao Baozhu to help her. She was minding the duration and degree of heating on her own.
Li Hongmei and Xiao Baozhu were only responsible for kneading the dough into small dough of even size, then wrapping the stuffing Ye Xiaoxian had prepared into the dough, and rolling it into pie-size dough of the same size with a rolling pin.
After the wok had been heated to dry up, Ye Xiaoxian poured several spoons of oil in it.
It made Li Hongmei’s heart ache since she never had the nerve to pour too much oil in dishes before they lived separately yet little Ye used a whole day’s portion once.
Ye Xiaoxian poured oil as if pouring water and when the oil was heated in the wok, she then put the pie-size dough in the wok each by each. With a sound of “squeaking”, here floated many oil fizz on the surface of the pie-size dough. Ye Xiaoxian didn’t care about the oil fizz but flipped the pie-size dough quickly. Soon the pie-size dough turned into flatbread with its two sides fried into golden yellow.
The fragrant smell of the flatbread came out again. As there was minced meat in the flatbread, the smell of the flatbread mixed with the fragrance of the dough, which made Li Hongmei’s mouth watering.
When Ye Xiaoxian got all the flatbread ready, Xiao Baoshan arrived home as well. He smelled the fragrance of the flatbread as soon as he came back. He couldn’t help rubbing his belly, finding the scent rather familiar, like the dish he used to have in army.
“Dinner is ready. Come and help to fill your bowls with porridge!”
Ye Xiaoxian baked a total of ten flatbread tonight, two for each, with rice porridge. A simple and delicious dinner was ready
“Ma, have a taste. How does it taste compared with the one in the front of the government office?” asked Ye Xiaoxian smilingly.
The flatbread was still scalding hot. Li Hongmei took one, blowing air on it as well as taking a quick bite. When she chewed it, she suddenly opened her eyes wide melodramatically and kept nodding, “Oh, it’s amazing, amazing. Yours is flatbread alright but it tastes far better than the one they sell. It smells great and tastes crispy.”
Xiao Baoshan also carried one flatbread with his chopsticks and took a bite. The edge of the flatbread was crispy, making a “squeaking” noise when he ate it which sounded even familiar like the one he ate before.
He couldn’t help but ask Ye Xiaoxian, “Little Ye, how do you know to make such flatbread?”
“I come up with it myself,” said Ye Xiaoxian, “Baoshan, why do you ask? Have you had the similar stuff anywhere else before?”
Xiao Baoshan nodded, “I had similar ones in the army. The whole battalion where I was ate flatbread and they tasted similar to yours but with less sesame and…not as meaty as this.”
It turned out to be like this. Ye Xiaoxian suddenly recalled why this flatbread was so famous in the local area was because of a local legend: in a certain Dynasty, there was an invasion of foreign enemies in the local area and there was a lack of food in the military camp. Later, a goddess called Empyrean Fairy came down and brought them the flatbread, so it has been prevailing since then.
Ye Xiaoxian used to think this legend was a pile of nonsense but now that she was in the ancient times, she suddenly found the legend a beautiful fantasy and the flatbread represented a certain spirit.