Cooking is a delicious spectacle. I was a lucky kid to be able to watch a local culinary show each morning.
In my hometown, breakfast is an eclectic ritual which involves going outside to pick one, two, three things or more among endless possibilities. We call it guo wao 过早 (guo zao) - having morning (time). Food stalls in the 80's were usually on a street corner or at the entrance of a small alley. Certainly simple and rustic, they offered an immersive experience though. The checkout was the kitchen, and the kitchen was where people could find a place to eat. Chaotic and organised at once. That was where I, as a kid, instead of just queuing, enjoyed my morning spectacle. The jianbing guozi was one of my favourites.
Photo by Jason King on Unsplash
On my way to school, one day, a new little booth popped up. It was a cold day, I could see heat rising from the small crowd surrounding the scene. The cook spoke with a Northern accent (which I later came to know to be from Tianjin). He had a large round shaped pan with no edge. Then he dropped a ladleful of batter on it, instantly creating a sizzling sound. As quickly as the batter was heated, he used a T-shaped spreader as if he drew a circle with a compass, then a perfectly round pancake (called jianbing) filled the pan after a swift turn of the hand.
I was amazed, a little hypnotised without exagerating, watching him making one pancake after another, always with the same amount of batter, the same paper thin but intact disc, the same agile precision. That’s not all. Once a pancake was made, while being cooked in the pan, he broke two eggs on it, coarsely mixed the yolk with the white, and ta-da! a bright abstract painting was created! He then flipped the pancake, put rectangular crackers (called guozi) on it, brushed a paste previously chosen by the customer, and quickly folded it with the painting facing outwards. That was the first jianbing guozi show I watched.
Photo by Bei, Jianbing from Beijing Crepes in Hong Kong
What happened next was predictably enjoyable as well when it came my turn to taste it. Every bite was a “millefeuille” of pancake and cracker - interleaved soft and crispy layers. The nutty flavour of mung beans (which was the only ingredient of the batter besides water) was mixed with a slightly spicy sauce that I had picked. What a warm and amusing treat on that cold day before starting school!
Video by Bei, Jianbing from Beijing Crepes in Hong Kong
Many years later, my parents joined me from China for a summer vacation in Brittany. Usually, it is not an easy task to find food for the Chinese taste in a western country. However, in that part of France, the galette seems to be a natural solution. Although made of buckwheat flour with an earthy taste, its nutty flavour does remind us of mung bean made jianbing.
To make a galette, the cook would practice almost the same gesture with a T-shaped spreader that makes the batter round and thin on a billig (a crepe maker). Then the perfect disc is usually filled with egg, ham and gruyère (a cheese) - which we call a “galette complète”; its edges are folded to form a square or a triangle and the fillings are placed in the middle.
Photo by Jérôme Decq on Flickr ACC
In its modern version, all other delicious foods from local andouille (a smoked sausage) to alpine tartiflette (a type of cheese baked with potatoes and pork belly) can be folded into it, offering limitless possibilities to enrich the galette repertoire. Such flexibility of combining different ingredients under the sole name of galette has more of an Asian spirit of cooking rather than a relatively well coded French cuisine with specific dish names and precise recipes. Moreover, unlike a typical French dish which is only served at lunch or dinner time, many places in Brittany serve the galette throughout the day, resembling a convivial and easy-to-eat food that matches jianbing guozi on a street corner – the place to enjoy the show and the food.
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