They're simple, incredibly versatile and bloody delicious, and if those three factors don't constitute good eating I don't know what does. If you had virtually nothing in your cupboard, you would probably still have the ingredients to whip some up, comprising essentially of flour, eggs and milk. They're insanely easy to make, and most cuisines have at least one variety of pancake, so you can eat around the world from the comfort of your sofa for no more than a few pence and a frying pan.
You can have them sweet- in the form of Scotch pancakes, fluffy American pancakes, tincy wincy and ever-so-sweet Dutch pancakes, super-thin French crêpes or in typical British sugar-and-lemon style. Or you can eat them savoury, as the wholesome buckwheat Breton galette, in Russian blini form, as the Indian rice-based dosa, steamed and stuffed with Beijing duck à la Chine or filled with meat and cheese as the central European palatschinke.
Making pancakes should certainly not be limited to pancake day. Because they are amazing. End of.
Of course, I did make pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, both sweet and savoury, but a few weeks earlier I felt peckish (as always) and couldn't wait until the day in question, so turned to my fast-becoming favourite food writer Simon Hopkinson for a pancake fix. I'm sure this won't be the first time I mention this terribly peremptory but incredible cook, he is brilliant and I love his style.
I made his 'Harry's Bar Custard Pancakes', a recipe taken from the famous Venetian bar and restaurant opened in the 1930s. The dish is essentially pancakes filled with creamy, thick custard, baked in the oven and then doused in Cointreau, before being set alight. The recipe called for 4 shots' worth of Cointreau which in retrospect might have been a bit excessive, and admittedly I'm not very good at the whole fire thing as I wuss out, but the taste of sugary, buttery pancakes filled with custard and rounded off with the bitter-sweet orangey taste of Cointreau was a fabulous combination. I will definitely try this again, not least so I can do the flames bit properly next time.
A few weeks later I played it safe for Shrove Tuesday with a classic ham, cheese and spinach galette, with traditional, thin crêpe style pancakes for dessert, with sugar, lemon, honey, ice cream, and all that jazz. Galettes are one of my favourite types of pancakes, a Breton speciality made with buckwheat flour that I had on many occasion when I lived in Brittany a few years ago.
The addition of the buckwheat flour gives the galette a great latticed pattern. When you add the batter to the pan over a high heat, hundreds of tiny bubbles rise in the pancake and form holes which look super cool. I was surprised by how authentic they looked, was immediately whisked back in a daydream haze to some small-town crêperie in France where I munched down galette after galette. They have beautiful dark brown colour with a slightly sweet and wheaty, wholesome flavour. I filled the galettes with chopped ham, grated cheddar and baby spinach before shoving them in the oven for a few minutes to let the cheese melt. Followed by masterful flipping from Dave, and a stack of pancakes for dessert....
No comments:
Post a Comment