Oily Scallion Cakes

Meal: Almost in Advance, Fried — Dinner: Menu

Around the corner from our first house in Taipei there was a tiny open-air restaurant, really no more than a covered shed with a few rough tables. In front of the restaurant stood a teen-aged boy who did nothing but make Oily Scallion Cakes all day long. He worked up the dough, kneaded it, sprinkled it with scallions and oil, twisted it into snail-shaped rolls, flattened them, and then fried each individual cake on a primitive iron grill