In the summer of 2005, when I travelled to Beijing with my family, the city was in full construction mode. On top of the country's already surging economic boom, preparations for the upcoming Olympics were in full force. Our tour guide even joked that the national animal, the panda, had been replaced by the crane.

One morning, before my family woke up, I went for a walk in the neighbourhood around our hotel. The air was still cool, but direct sunlight hitting my skin already hinted at the scorching day to come. Actually, not a hint. More like the Sun taunting me. "Enjoy this brief reprieve before I fully wake up in about half an hour," it was saying.

The small side streets I like to explore, where no tourists care to visit, were piled with rubble everywhere. Small, older buildings with the quintessentially Chinese clay tiled roofs were being replaced by the steel fortresses of the modern world which China was then eager to catch up to. While I felt that something was being lost here, I do think that raising the standard of living for a billion people is a good idea. And I don't think we should ever sacrifice the future for the sake of the past.

As I rounded the corner of one of these small streets, I came across a major construction site -- the kind with a gigantic hole in ground, surrounded by a fence so people don't fall in. It was already busy and bustling with hundreds of workers, well earlier than any construction workers in the west would have even had their coffee and doughnut. Who knows how long they had already been there. I spotted a few of these workers taking a nap in their construction vehicle. Perhaps this was already 4 hours into their 12 hour work day. And perhaps they were taking advantage of the relatively cool morning. I guess this is why things get built fast in China. The Great Wall, after all, was not built by labour unions and safety committees.

At the entrance of this construction site, an old man was making a version of the onion cakes we'll make today. On a table in front of him, he had a wok full of oil which he was using to deep fry and beside the wok was a 1 m high stack of deep fried onion cakes the size of a large pizza. It made sense to sell them here to the construction workers. They were cheap, filling and you could eat them with your hands.

I wanted to buy 2 of them to feed my whole family, but the thought of carrying these monstrosities while trying to find my way back to the hotel through the labyrinth of streets I hadn't bothered to keep track of was daunting. Besides, how would I be able to see over these giant cakes to find my way?

I guess we'll have to settle for making some "normal size" onion cakes ourselves.

Ingredients

• 2 cups flour
• 1 cup hot water
• 1.5 cups chopped green onions -- If you're wondering why I'm calling these "onion cakes" it's because the Chinese name is actually "onion oil cakes". Green onions in Chinese are called "onions" and onions are called "western onions".
• 1 tsp salt
• sesame oil
• cooking oil

Method

• On a large cutting board, mix the salt with the flour then form a "flour volcano" by making a hole in the pile of flour.
• Add the hot water "lava" into our volcano. You might not be able to add all the water at once without overflowing. Just keep adding more later as the flour absorbs the water.
• Pull the flour from the inside edges into the lava and start mixing them together. Be careful not to break the side of the volcano. Lava everywhere is messy! You may want to use a spoon for this, because lava is hot.

• Once the flour has absorbed all the water, knead the dough for 10 minutes.
• Form the dough into a ball and place it into an oiled bowl.
• Cover the bowl with a plate or a wet towel and put it in the fridge for 30 minutes.

• Dust the cutting board with some flour.
• Take the dough out from the fridge and separate it into 3 balls of increasing size.
• Make a snowman.

• Just kidding. That would be silly. We need 4 balls of equal size.
• Take one ball and roll it out into a fairly thin circle.
• Brush the surface with sesame oil and sprinkle a liberal amount of green onions on it.

• Roll up the circle into a cigar. Don't smoke.

• Coil the cigar into a cinnamon bun. Don't add cinnamon.

• Squash down the cinnamon bun and roll it into a flat circle. This process creates layers in our cakes that puff up and give flakiness when we fry them.
• Repeat for the other 3 balls. If you are stacking them on a plate, you may need to lightly dust them with flour so they don't stick to each other.

• Put some cooking oil in a pan. Don't be shy with it (but don't deep fry either). These are "oil cakes" after all.
• Turn heat to just a notch below high. We want a fairly hot pan.
• Fry the cake until you see it get puffy and the edges start to brown. You can lift it with your flipper to check if it is nicely golden.

• Flip the cake and fry the other side the same way. These are thin so they cook fast. Each side should only take about 1 minute or even less.

• Remember to re-oil the pan in between each cake.
• Stack them up and cut into 6 pieces pizza style.

• For a nice dipping sauce, use 1:1 soy sauce and vinegar, a few drops of sesame oil and a few slices of fresh chili.

The uncooked onion cakes can be made ahead of time and frozen too. Use a piece of plastic wrap in between each one to keep them separate. Later, take them out from the freezer and fry them. No need to defrost, but they will require a bit more cooking time. Very convenient for homemade "instant food" -- great for the munchies or unexpected guests!