A couple of weekends back, we picked up a bunch of big scallions for 1 or 2 kuai. Scallions (da cong or “big onion”) here come in three sizes: regular, big and giant. The ones we got were like the big ones in the picture below (not even the giant ones!). They literally did not fit in our fridge, so I had to cut most of the green part off.

Naturally, last night, I still had some left, so I decided to make one of my favorites, scallion pancakes, to go along with some steamed carrot and zucchini. Usually I use jiaozi fen (dumpling flour) or zi fa fen (self-rising flour), but it’s not something I use very often and I had run out a while ago and never got anymore. But fen is fen, so I used what I did have: whole wheat all purpose flour.

It’s actually taken me a long time to realize that I had been buying whole wheat flour. I’ve been making all of my desserts with it for the past two or so years, and I always wondered what the weird brown specks were when I sifted the flour. I was kind of concerned because they aren’t really visible until you sifted the flour, when it separates from the whiter part of the endosperm, which is less coarse so it sifts more easily. What is that?, I thought. But one day, at the Western supermarket, I saw a bag labeled whole wheat flour that looked like my flour — and that’s how I learned.

Anyway. Behold my pre-cooked, pre-flattened cong you bing!