Something Old, Something New, Something Delicious

The old tradition of Pancake Day presented a slight challenge for the current healthy/weight-loss kick, but a bit of creativity resulted in something really rather good, with loads of flavour to it.


Time was - especially as a greedy and - in spite of that - almost painfully thin child - when pancake day meant about eight of them, made by my mother with all white flour and served with sugar and butter, or sugar and lemon. Or jam. Lovely, but not exactly great on the GI spectrum. So I made mine this year with half white flour and half wholegrain buckwheat (giving the resulting pancakes a nicely nutty hint), plus a good handful of leftover dried onion flakes stirred into the batter. They added far more onion than you'd expect, and as a bonus filled the kitchen and dining room with appetising oniony aromas to get the gastric juices flowing. I even got a compliment from Sternest Critic.


Clearly (I hope) savoury, they were stuffed with chopped mushrooms and chopped spinach that had been cooked beforehand, and a dollop of ricotta (plus a grated dog end of grana Padano). Reheated in a hot oven with the juices from the mushrooms poured over to keep them moist, and a sprinkling of grated parmesan more for decoration than anything else, the dish was filling, full of flavour and pretty virtuous.


They will be made again in a few weeks, I'm sure. Healthy doesn't have to be just salad and fruit, fine though both may be.

One Day a Year - and Quite a Few Others

It's not exactly a national scandal that pancakes now seem to be ghettoised to their own Tuesday and nothing else. But it is bloody silly.

I love them. Cheap, tasty, light or substantial, sweet or savoury, American or crepes (will someone tell me how to do accents?), innumerable fillings opening up gastronomic potential. What's not to love?

We had the thin French-ish ones as a makeshift pud last night. I regularly do the fluffy American version taught me by a US-based friend for breakfast.

When I said to my son they were something I had to teach him before he flies the nest he joked about buying ready-made mix. Apparently hanging 17-year-olds upside-down from an upper floor is frowned on by the authorities.

You hear blokes boasting about being able to do their 'signature dish,' quite often a green Thai curry. As intelligent as saying you have got your time for sex down below a minute. Rather than learn one fancy dish to be repeated for friends ad nauseam, between times re-heating ready meals, it seems far more intelligent to learn a few core dishes. Pancakes - certainly the thin ones - should be one of those.

I don't bother to measure the ingredients these days, blending an egg, flour and milk (with a big pinch of salt, sometimes a tsp or two of sugar, and a slick of melted butter) with an electric mixer until the consistency of single cream. It's best left in the bowl for 30 minutes or more (I am not sure of the science, but it works) before frying in a non-stick pan greased with butter.

It made me wonder what are the other 'core' dishes or similar? A stew I guess. A simple soup. A curry (green Thai or otherwise). Salad dressing. Roast chicken. A tomato-based sauce for pasta. Chops various (technique same but degree of cooking different depending on meat). Work a few variations for each and you won't have to live on ready-meals. And gentlemen should never boast about sex - though I have my time up to over a minute. Cue old Woody Allen joke for fans of his earlier films.

One Flame Pudding - Cheap and Cheerful

November is when I start to feel the need for a pudding to finish an evening meal, and not something like a pastry or a blob of ice cream either, it needs to be sweet and starchy. I put it down to the failing light - yesterday it felt as if the day were ending about 3:30, and when we ate at 6:30 (it would have been 7:30 in spring and summer) the world had closed around us, cold, dark, unwelcoming. The body craves supplies to get it through the winter.

Earlier we had warmed and cheered ourselves - and rewarded, as we'd just chopped down an unproductive tree at the allotment and dug several beds over - with my favourite winter-warmer, hot buttered rum. A measure of rum (Kraken spiced rum the first bottle to hand) pinch of cinnamon and mace, tsp of sugar, and three measures of boiling water in which a tsp of unsalted butter is melted and vigorously stirred. Cake in a mug. Toddy or pudding (and pudding), damp cold weather has its compensations.

Only having thought of the need for a pud as the main course neared readiness possibilities were limited, pancakes the obvious choice.

Everyone loves pancakes, and everyone should be able to make them. For student bedsits for example it seems the ideal standby, minimal ingredients, quickly done, and informal - they are best eaten hot from the pan rather than batched up to eat together, so traffic and conversation flows in and out of the kitchen.

Why in Britain many people don't eat them other than on Pancake Tuesday is beyond me. For a few pence you have something that carries savoury or sweet fillings, is rapidly made, and tastes great.

Plain flour, an egg, and milk are whisked until a single cream consistency is arrived at, a pinch of salt added, and for pudding ones a tsp or three of sugar. Non-stick pan barely greased and heated, just enough batter to thinly coat its surface is poured in (it's a big mistake to make fatter versions, they take longer to cook, and the middle ends up doughy while the surfaces overdo), and tossing or flipping with a spatula the pancake is cooked in a couple of minutes. As with all cooking, a decent pan - with a heavy base - makes life easier, but pancakes are more forgiving of thin pans than most things.

We had most of ours with ice cream and chocolate sauce, one with maple syrup. A couple last night were eaten as they were. Sometimes a squeeze of lemon or orange juice and sugar is preferable, sometimes butter and sugar. We all felt better for them.