This Chef Won’t Travel Anywhere Without Deep-Fried Cantonese Pancakes

This article was originally published in Danish on MUNCHIES DK.

Before Xian Zhang Sun goes traveling, he heads to his kitchen to make pancakes. At Noodle House, a small 16-seat Cantonese restaurant located in Copenhagen's Vesterbro district, he throws thin discs of batter into an oil-filled wok. The pancakes puff up like giant golden baubles, and Xian Zhang packs them neatly in paper bags

He hates plane food, and the pancakes will keep as comforting sustenance for a few days.

"I'm picky about food," says the 59-year-old head chef and owner at Noodle House. "If I can't find a good Chinese restaurant where I'm going, then I prefer to bring some of my own food. The pancake's taste comes from something very basic. It's just garlic, spring onion, butter, salt, and flour—but it's like a magic trick."

I'm visiting Noodle House not to stock up on packed holiday lunches, but to get a lesson in the art of making this Cantonese pancake, which has been on the menu since the place opened in 2008. Xian Zhang runs the restaurant together with Youran Tao Jensen, who is the restaurant manager, and the assistant chef Pifu Zhang. Youran and Pifu met at Noodle House where they were both regulars. Now they are married and have a five-month old son.

Xian Zhang is right about the magic trick. Like so much of Chinese food, the pancakes at Noodle House can't be judged purely from a Western palate. Part of the magic is the texture: crispy on the outside, yet soft and slightly chewy as you bite through the beautiful airy blisters. There is the slightest hint of sharpness from spring onions, sweet richness of butter, and not a drop of greasy oil on the tongue.

In the kitchen at the back of the restaurant, Xian Zhang has already prepared the dough. As for the ingredients, there is no great trade secret. The wheat flour is mixed into a dough with butter, salt, garlic, granulated chicken stock, and spring onions ground so finely you can barely detect them.

The chef laughs when I ask for a recipe so I can try making them at home. "There are some processes involved that require experience and improvisation. Of course, you can follow a recipe and make a standard pancake, but I cannot guarantee the result."

There is nothing standard about this pancake recipe. It earned its inventor a car—a brand new Toyota—and a satellite phone in 1984 after it won a prize at a government-sponsored cooking competition in Guangzhou, where Xian Zhang grew up. The prize went to his friend and fellow student from culinary school. "I negotiated with my friend and got the recipe," says Xian Zhang. "It became quite popular in China. Just like the butter cookie in Denmark."

This Cantonese pancake is not just a rarity in Copenhagen, but in all of China, says the chef. He claims that there are only 12 restaurants who know how to make the prizewinning recipe, and only a handful of chefs who truly master the technique.

Xian Zhang was trained in the finer arts of Cantonese cuisine at the five-star hotel White Swan in Guangzhou, where he worked in the 80s. He arrived in Denmark in 1991 and worked at the restaurant Lai Hoo, where he got to cook for the Danish royal family and cater for the shipping giant Maersk. These days, he is generating buzz at much more humble confines. The dim sum at Noodle House is not as intricate as the ornamented platters that were served at the White Swan in the mid-80s, but he's happy cooking the food that is close to his heart and the region where he grew up.

He starts out by putting the dough for the pancake through an electric roller until it has the right thickness and it has been layered enough times. "It goes through the rolling machine maybe five times," says Pifu. "But it's all about the feeling. You have to touch the dough to know when it's ready."

Xian Zhang stabs out discs the size of beer coasters with a cookie cutter and rolls them by hand with a rolling pin until they are almost as thin as a dumpling wrapper. The wafer thin discs then have to rest for a couple of hours so the gluten can start to work and make the pancake elastic.

"It's about timing and choosing the right point to tap it," says Pifu who is leaning in over his master's shoulder. "All sides need to be fried."

Youran serves me the pancakes with a plate of mixed dumplings, a Sichuan-inspired cucumber salad, and wasabi sauce. As for the pancakes, you eat them on their own, rolled up like an empty shawarma flatbread. No sauces—not if you want to experience the magic.

Besides the addictive flavor and texture of the dough, it's the lack of grease that is striking, considering that this was yanked out of the wok mere seconds ago.

He heads over to the cooker, where the splash guard is covered in Chinese newspapers. On the bench next to that are a steel bowl of fried rice paper crisps and the chef's homemade sauces, including a very un-Cantonese version: wasabi with Sichuan pepper and Worcestershire sauce. Needless to say, the fusion freestyle of numbing peppercorns and umami overload is ridiculously good.

Xian Zhang holds the pancake with both hands over a wok full of 180-degree frying oil. He slides down the pancake at an angle so it gets completely submerged in the sputtering oil bath. He then gives it a few pokes with the tips of his thongs and flips it over as the pastry immediately puffs up. It's similar to how a pappadum or dried pork rind react in the fryer.

The chef nods approvingly.

"I don't like when things get too greasy," says Xian Zhang. "When I smell these pancakes, I get hungry. I'm hungry for the way they taste and the way they feel when you bite into them."

Whatever happened to his friend back in Guangzhou who invented the recipe?

"He is still working in China," says chef. He is 60. I'm 59."

Did he become famous?

"Yes, but primarily because of the pancake. He was handsomely rewarded."