Pancakes
Pancakes are a great student and teenager late night standby-cheap, quick, tasty and easy.
Arguably the first thing you should teach your children to cook. 'Pancake day' goes back to the
tradition of using up all the fat in the house before the stat of the season of Lent, the 40 days
leading up to Easter when many Christians abstained from rich or luxurious foods, hence the
name 'Mardi Gras' (fat Tuesday).
To make a dozen pancakes
400g white flour
1 egg
Salt
Milk and water 50:50
Make sure you have some suitable plates warm. Mix and beat to the right consistency in a 1 pint
(500mls) Pyrex® jug; it should pour like medium thick custard. Add more flour if the mix is too
runny, more liquid if it’s too stiff. Heat a little sunflower oil (lard or beef dripping is what my
mother used to use) in a heavy 10 inch frying pan, when hot, pour about 25mls of batter into
the centre and spread round the pan either by tilting the pan or with a thin metal spatula. Cook
until it’s half done, about 40 seconds depending on the thickness of the batter, then turn with
the spatula, no nonsense about flipping them in the air. Cook another 20-30 seconds then put
on a plate and start another. Add a touch more oil at least every 2 pancakes, not too much.
The traditional topping is lemon juice and sugar, but I prefer maple syrup. This is expensive
but a little goes a long way and nothing else comes close. Other toppings include blackcurrant
jam, honey, bananas, chocolate spread, marmalade or savories like cream cheese, smoked
salmon, or minced meat sauce.
A pancake sandwich cake (sweet or savoury) can be made by spreading layers of jam, meat
sauce (Bolognese for example), or similar, building up 5 or 6 layers to make a cake which can
be cut and served in portions as a savoury or sweet.
Crepes are essentially the same as pancakes but thinner, ideally use a mix of regular and 30%
buckwheat flour. They are traditional in Brittany and Normandy and are used as wrappers for all
sorts of tasty things from sausages and ham to ice cream and apple sauce. You need a runnier
batter and you must spread it very thin, a metal fish slice is handy. Being thinner, crepes cook
faster. Watch them being made when you go to France.
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