Dan bing! It just might be the answer to the insane demands of breakfast, that incessant meal of few decent daily choices. For a short while, I ate dan bing regularly. I miss it now. Let me recollect.
It was in Taipei. I would ride my motorcycle through a tight group of streets and alleys and come upon an eatery that was, according to my imperfect memory, both indoors and outdoors. I recall a crêpe griddle being under an awning out front, but perhaps my memory is confusing the internal and the external because spaces seemed to overlap in the small neighborhood. On the crêpe griddle, a cook would create a thin pool of liquid made from cornstarch, flour and water, and after it began to sizzle and lift up from the hot surface, she would crack an egg atop it and add scallions. When the egg set, the cook would fold the crêpe, leaving me to apply a soy sauce-based condiment. The result was dan bing. Dan is pronounced sharply, definitively [4th tone]. Bing descends and then rises, as though a parachutist landing and then being lifted up slightly by a breeze [3rd tone]. Witness dan bing, as photographed in a plastic to-go bag:
A decent partner to dan bing was a stick of friend dough (that's a typo there in 'fried', but I will leave it because dough that is gently immersed in an effervescent jacuzzi of warm oil is, indeed, one's friend) -- called you tiao -- and a bowl of warm, salty soy milk in which to dip it.
Gentle reader, I enjoin you to imagine the complementary prowess of dan bing and you tiao: Savory and sweet. Protein and sugar. Pliable and crisp. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Folds and protrusions. Rangy Marr and Statue Morrissey. Together, dan bing and you tiao prepare an eater for the variety of possibilities in any day. Eat them, and your day's elevators will open ever so decadently.
