Xiamen pancakes: a big hit at French food festival

Zhang Congming, a renowned chef from Xiamen, Fujian province, is busy preparing Xiamen pancakes at a food festival held in Eze, a beautiful village in southeastern France on Oct 12. [Photo/xmnn.cn]

Pancakes made by a Chinese cook from Xiamen, Fujian province proved to be very popular at a food festival held in Eze, a village in southeastern France on Oct 12.

Some 49 renowned French chefs were invited to cook cuisine at the scene during the festival, including Michel Roth, a MOF chef, the highest title in France and gold winner of a world famous cooking competition, the Bocuse d'Or.

Zhang Congming, the festival's only foreign chef and also a world-renowned one, presented Xiamen pancakes to the festival goers, which left visitors with a good impression of the Chinese city.

A few months ago, a French chef was impressed by Zhang's Chinese pancake at his restaurant in Xiamen and invited him to share the delicacy to his French counterparts and food lovers at the Eze Food Festival.

Pancakes, one of the most traditional foods in Xiamen, enjoy a history of more than 400 years and have been savored by many state leaders.

In order to reproduce the ancient method of making Xiamen pancakes, the Chinese chef paged through all the ancient documents recording such a delicacy.

Zhang used eight kinds of ingredients, such as milled peanut candy and fried seaweed, to diversify the taste and 12 kinds of food materials, including oyster, shrimp meat, cabbage, and carrot, to render the dish to the Fujian taste.

The Xiamen pancake is made by spreading a piece of crust, adding the 12 kinds of food materials and eight kinds of ingredients as to one's liking to the crust, brushing a layer of sauce to them and then rolling up the crust.