seafood pancakes revisited
by michelletranny
An asian-themed potluck with all of our friends seemed like the perfect opportunity to take the seafood pancake plunge! It was so easy after all, with all the short-cut seafood pancake ingredients that Koreana Plaza had to offer. The three tallies manned up for the Asian potluck spread — Caro made baked tofu spring rolls and Andrea made bacon and egg fried rice. Brace yourself now for something ever so rare (in this blog) — person pictures!
A digressive little sidenote/tip: the seasoning Maggi (pictured above), as I’ve learned, is the essential ingredient for getting that perfect fried rice flavor! I must thank Andrea for that one because previously I always made my fried rice using soy sauce.
The seafood pancakes recipe was really simple; all that was needed was some packaged Korean pancake mix (available at the Korean supermarket and loaded with tasty MSG) to which one only had to add water, some packaged frozen seafood (Koreana Plaza offered a mixed bag of frozen seafood that included squid, clams, shrimp and chunks of some white fish), green onions, bell peppers and jalapenos. First I made the batter by combining the pancake mix and water. Then I chopped some green onion into long strips, julienned some bell peppers, thinly sliced some jalapenos, and threw all of these into the batter. The seafood mix came frozen so I had two ranges going — one to defrost the seafood and the other to cook the pancakes.
As I defrosted the seafood in one pan I intermittently added it to the batter which I then ladled into another pan with some heated sesame oil in it. Defrosting the seafood produced a lot of liquid in the pan so I of course had to drain it before adding it to the batter. The batter looked like this:
They cooked in the pan just like any ol’ pancakes.
Sadly I couldn’t get any good pictures of the finished product, but here’s an ill-lit photo of our asiany spread.
Mmm that reminds me! Perhaps the most important part of the seafood pancake experience is the delicious dipping sauce it comes with. I got a pretty good recipe from Food & Wine, of all places, found here. It basically just requires mixing some soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, green onions and jalapenos together, but I find the diluted soy flavor to be irresistibly savory! The seafood pancakes were a major hit, and now I’ve got all the whiteys/Korean food newbies hooked 
