How to make your own Taiwan breakfast specialities, shao bing and xian dou jiang
Start the day the Taiwanese way with hot salted soybean milk and fried puffy sesame bread stuffed with egg and spring onion
One dish I always seek out when I visit Taiwan is xian dou jiang, hot salted soy milk, lightly curdled with vinegar and flavoured with preserved vegetable and tiny shrimp. It would be a light, healthy breakfast, except I can’t resist eating it with shao bing (puffy sesame bread) stuffed with spring onion-flecked scrambled egg and yau ja gwai (Chinese fried doughnut, or you tiao, as they are known in Taiwan). It’s not easy to find xian dou jiang or shao bing in Hong Kong, so you’ll need to make your own.
Shao bing
I make these in batches of 10 and freeze any I don’t use. Reheat them (from frozen or defrosted) like you cook them, in a cast-iron skillet over a medium-high flame.
This recipe is adapted from one in Florence Lin’s Complete Book of Chinese Noodles , Dumplings and Breads (1986). It’s out of print, unfortunately, and copies in good condition fetch high prices on eBay.
For the roux:
70ml cooking oil, plus extra for coating the pan
100 grams unbleached plain (all-purpose) flour
½ tsp fine sea salt
For the hot-water dough:
260 grams plain (all-purpose) flour, plus extra for rolling
½ tsp fine sea salt
210ml hot water (at 75-80 degrees Celsius)
Untoasted sesame seeds
To serve:
1 egg per person
1 spring onion per person
Yau ja gwai, as needed
1 Make the roux at least an hour in advance, to give it time to cool. Pour the oil into a small pan and heat over a low flame until hot. Add the flour and salt and cook for five minutes, stirring constantly. The mixture should be smooth and cohesive, without any oil floating to the surface. If any oil separates out, stir in a little more flour. Allow to cool to room temperature, then divide into two portions (85 grams each). Refrigerate one portion for future use.
2 Make the hot-water dough. Mix the flour and salt in a bowl, then add the hot water and stir the ingredients. When the dough is cool enough to handle, turn it out onto a work surface and knead it into a smooth, cohesive mass. Invert the bowl over the dough and leave to cool to room temperature.