Flatbread Stuffed with Cold Starch Jelly 锅盔灌凉粉

Flatbread Stuffed with Cold Starch Jelly (锅盔灌凉粉) is a snack from Nanchong (南充) in Sichuan: a freshly baked guokui (锅盔) flatbread split open and filled with liangfen (凉粉), a cold jelly set from starch. Chinese Wikipedia also records it as guokui jia liangfen (锅盔夹凉粉) and describes it as popular in Nanchong. A Nanchong city government notice on a national tourism route lists it among the Nanchong specialty foods promoted with the route, together with Zhang Fei beef (张飞牛肉), Baoning vinegar (保宁醋) and northern Sichuan liangfen (川北凉粉).

How it is made

In a 2023 essay for the Sichuan Legal Daily (四川法治报), Lin Qianhui (林千惠), who works at a court in Nanchong's Jialing District (嘉陵区), recalls a stall from her childhood at a market-town quay on the Jialing River (嘉陵江). A lump of risen dough is rolled thin, oiled, rolled up, pressed flat again, pushed out into a round and sprinkled with sesame. The cook bakes it in a hot iron pan until both sides are golden and firm, then stands the breads in a ring inside the stove under the pan to finish. Meanwhile a bowl of white liangfen is dressed with soy sauce, chopped spring onion and the stall's own chilli oil and tossed. The puffed bread is slit into a round pocket, held open with chopsticks, filled with the dressed jelly and handed over in a sleeve of brown paper.

Flavour and texture

Lin remembers the bread as crisp and the whole as hot outside and cool inside, with enough chilli to make you sweat. She calls it a food of north-eastern Sichuan (川东北), different from the shaobing (烧饼) flatbreads of northern China.