Straw Hat Flat Bread, Panfried Pork Buns and Donut in Syrup - Koeksisters

I made quite a fair bit of snacks, sides etc for dinner lately and these are a few of them:

1. Straw Hat Flat Bread - it's from northern region of china, found in Dong Bei or Shan Xi, the northerners do know how to make nice breads! and this is one of them, I adapted from the versions I learned from some Chinese bloggers and must say, it is not the original

straw hat bread:

500g flour
125ml milk
125ml water
1.5 tsp salt
1 egg
Plenty of olive oil.

1. Make a soft dough, it can be quite wet, and sticky, knead till elastic and put aside to set, drizzle through a bit of olive oil around the dough so it won't stick to the container. Set for 1 hour.
2. The dough should be very stretchy, cut into 8 portions (can be more or less depending on how big you want your flat bread to be) roll out as thin as possible, and drizzle on more olive oil once spread out.
3. fold the flat sheet like folding up a fan, zig zag until the sheet became a long string with a lot of folds, swirl and curl like curling up a snake shape, set aside.
4. Once all curls are made, heat up a crepe pan with a bit of oil or butter, what ever you prefer. Use the rolling pin again and roll out the curled bread, made it 2mm thin again before place on the crepe pan. Cook till golden brown, flip side and once cooked, ready to serve....

It's much easier and quicker to make than roti chanai and is as flakey... goes well with stews and curries.
2. Panfried Pork Bun...
The proper Shanghai version is a much smaller one, but I was in a hurry and I made a big one, I do however, flatted it out and fried both sides... cut in the middle to serve... it's a bit big....
3. Koeksisters...

I had them from the church luncheons... and fell in love with them since. I did a research on a few recipes, and I did try very hard to plait them.. however.. they didn't behave as "told" and as they puff up in the deep frier, they sort of lost the shape of the plaits and I end up with curly donuts...

For the dough:
2 cup SR flour
1 tsp Baking Powder
60g butter
1 egg - lightly beaten
1/2 cup water
Rub butter into flour, add the remaining ingredient and form the dough, set for 2-3 hours minimum. Cut into 2cm thick long strings and plait (well, didn't work all that well for me, although tasted good....) Fry in hot oil.

Dip in cold chilled syrup, and serve.

The traditional Koeksister syrup is made up of lemon, cinnemon and ginger and sugar of course, with water. I happened to have some orange syrup with all spice I made a while ago chilled so I used that instead....