Sesame Cakes Stuffed with Minced Meat & Shredded Pork in Tofu-Skin Wrappers

Read about the dishes:

Sesame Cakes stuffed with minced meat:

Then the meat and the cakes. First he marinated the minced pork. While it soaked he worked with the wheat flour and a little fat until he had just the weight he wanted, then formed the dough into balls that he rolled in sesame. The next step was to add minced water chestnuts to the pork and fry it quickly on a griddle with garlic and ginger and green onion and soy until it was deep brown and chewy-soft. Then he held another wok upside down, dry, over a high fire until it was very hot, after which he pressed the dough balls into little disks all over the inside and flattened them slightly with his fingers. “This is another dish of the Empress Dowager’s,” he told his son. “This one came to her in a dream. Did you know that? The old Buddha dreamed, and then she ordered her chefs to make it.” He smiled. “Actually, it’s not bad,” he said.

The wok with the dough disks inside it went back over the fire, upside down and angled, constantly turned, carefully watched, until all the flat cakes were golden brown and ready to be popped off.

“Split them,” Liang Yeh said, handing the steaming plate to Sam. “Stuff them with the meat.”
– from The Last Chinese Chef

Shredded pork in tofu-skin wrappers:

The talk bounced ahead to an animated discussion of possible restaurants. Eventually it was decided that the three elders must have jingjiang rou si, a celestially delicious local dish of shredded pork in piquant sauce rolled up with spring onion in a tofu wrapper. This specialty was available at many places around Beijing, but they had to have the choicest and most succulent, and for that they had to trek to a certain restaurant on the northeast side of town.
– from The Last Chinese Chef

Taste the Dishes:

Dear reader, when in Beijing you too should trek to a certain restaurant on the northeast side of town to feast on jingjiang rou si. The name, which means ‘capital-style pork shreds in soy sauce,’ hardly does justice to this delicious creation. Lean, boneless shredded pork in a complex sauce (containing many ingredients besides the soy sauce) is served piping hot on a substantial bed of cold, crisp, slivered scallion. A stack of paper-thin, square tofu wrappers is offered on the side. A pile of cold scallion and a large dollop of steaming pork-shreds-in-sauce is placed on a tofu wrapper, then rolled up and eaten burrito-style. I try not to burn my mouth, but the divinity of this dish always gets the better of me. While jingjiang rou si is a venerable Beijing specialty, food lovers agree that Dao Jia Chang serves the city’s most exquisite version. This restaurant also serves a very good version of sesame cakes stuffed with minced meat, or shao bing jia rou mo, the dish Sam’s father makes at the banquet in The Last Chinese Chef. See the Beijing section of Where Shall I Eat? for other recommended dishes. Dao Jia Chang, #20 Guangxi Men Beili, in the Xibahe area, near the Chongqing Hotel. Tel. 6422-1078. Meals are served at old-fashioned times and they close in between, meaning lunch is 11-2 and dinner 5-9. The place tends to be packed at peak hours. If you call at those times you may be told a table that day is flat impossible. Yet I find – and the wait staff confirms – that just showing up (sans reservation) around 1 for lunch or around 8 for dinner almost always circumvents the problem. Finally, Dao Jia Chang is on a small side street and sometimes taxi drivers don’t know how to locate the address. Simply have your hotel desk call the restaurant before you set out and write down explicit instructions in Chinese in case your taxi driver needs them.