Kimchi Scallion Pancake Quesadillas
During the pandemic I used a fair amount of my excess free time in recipe experimentation, often going places I didn't think I would. One such example was daeji bulgogi scallion pancake quesadillas, which was something I was aware could be a thing, but felt was a little over the top for my own tastes. Once I gave it a try though, I was a convert, and my thoughts then began to shift to thinking about a point in the future when I could once again share such a project with my friends and family. That time finally came last fall when I grilled up a large batch of scallion pancake quesadillas at a Meatwave, but I swapped the bulgogi for vegetarian kimchi to make it a dish all my guests could partake in.
Scallion pancakes are something I've been making for quite some time and are like second nature to me now, but whenever I try to describe the process to people, it sounds overly complicated. So I like to take each scallion pancake post as an opportunity to outline the process again, because once you make a couple, it's really not that difficult. The dough itself is a cinch, being just flour and boiling water put together in a food processor.
The dough needs to relax and cool for about half and hour before it can be worked into pancakes, so I used that down time to make the same spicy sour cream I used on my previous Korean barbecue pancakes. I was thinking about skipping this, but it's so quick, simple, and delicious, I thought the five minutes or so of effort to combine sour cream, gochujang, lime juice, and sesame oil was going to be well worth it. Most of the prep time was actually spent getting the sauce into a squeeze bottle and cleaning up.
After the rest, I divided the dough into six equal pieces, and starting with one of those. I rolled it out into a thin circle. I then brushed on a layer of sesame oil and rolled the dough up. Then, starting with one end, I formed the rolled dough into a spiral and tucked the loose end underneath.
Next, I once again rolled the dough into a thin circle and brushed it sesame oil, but this time I added a handful of scallions on before repeating the process of rolling close, forming a spiral, and rolling out the dough into a circle one last time. The repeated rolling and application of oil is what creates the flaky layers of a scallion pancake, so the entire process is crucial in achieving that.
As each pancake was done being formed, I stacked them up on a plate with parchment between them to prevent them from sticking together. Then I took them outside and cooked them up over a hot fire. Cooking on the grill works quite well for scallions pancakes, but it requires a very watchful eye and a lot of flipping to avoid them from overly charring. You want some deep browning and char here and there, but once they're close to be being done, they can go from browned to blackened really fast if you're not vigilant enough.
After all the pancakes were cooked, I assembled the quesadillas starting with a layer of low-moisture mozzarella that I topped with roughly chopped kimchi, scallions, and cilantro. I assembled all them before going back to the grill, where they were placed over indirect heat on a fire now pumping out a temperature around 400°F.
I covered the grill and let them cook until the cheese had completely melted. This didn't take that long, less than five minutes per batch. Once done, I sliced each quesadilla into six portions, plated them up, and squeezed on the spicy sour cream before unleashing them on my crowd.
As I figure based on my experience with these quesadillas before, the first tray disappeared in no time and I soon grilled off a second batch. While I have a personal preference for the previous recipe I did with daeji bulgogi, there was something comforting about this kimchi version that both felt more simple, but no less delicious since that spicy fermented cabbage brought in a deep flavor. I think taking the time to make the spicy sour cream was a good call because it really made it feel complete, at least for me because I rarely eat a quesadilla without sour cream. It felt good to finally be able to share this dish with my friends, even though this common theme of things I was waiting to share after the pandemic has more-or-less come to a close since the time on the other side is now longer than the time spent in isolation.
