The pancakes I have known and loved

Have you ever considered how many incarnations of pancakes there are in the world?

I grew up with fatty, thin, large blini. I would spread sour cream or carefully distribute lox on mine and fold them up into neat quarters. The contrast of the mildly sweet dough with the sour or salty filling is one of my cherished childhood food memories.

I can't say that the French crepe had much hold on my heart, but the next pancake that took my fancy is the good old American diner pancake.

When I moved to the States I brought some expectations with me. Lockers in High School were the coolest thing ever. Jelly Beans must be the most delicious candy invented and David Letterman is the cornerstone of comedy.

I really don't know where the high regard for Dave came from, but while I appreciate his weary presence on late night TV, I quickly discovered much more worthy comedy gods. Jelly Beans were also a let-down. Waxy and oddly-flavored, they weren't the Willy Wonka creations I had hyped them up to be. Lockers were still the coolest thing ever.

With some of my American dreams shattered, I quickly looked around for new ones and the imagery of an American Diner and its contents quickly took hold of me. My friends and I would meet up before school in an incredibly basic, uninspiring diner by our school. We sat at the long counter and I watched the guy at the griddle station squeeze out portions of dough onto the hot surface. I saw that round plop of dough transform into a curiously yellow-tinted, fluffy pancake. These got served up with some crispy bacon, a small glass of orange juice and acidic coffee. You helped yourself to the sticky bottle of fake syrup. I loved it.

 

Cut to years later when I was living in a slightly hippy-ish part of San Francisco. I was an adult, I had a job, a cold studio apartment and a minor food blog obsession. The humble diner pancake no longer held my interest. I had by that point absorbed most of mainstream American food culture and was now delving deeper into different muffin-making methods, into types of frosting and Thanksgiving turkey preparations.

It was in this California kitchen that I first made these puppies. The idea of throwing whole grains into my pancake batter was wholly foreign to me. The words 'oatmeal pancakes' had me imagine grey, gummy disks with dry oats throughout. It was my trust in Molly Wizenberg, the allure of using buttermilk for a project, and there being something suitably health-foodish about them that fit in with my new surroundings, which made me take the leap.

You mix two cups of oats together with two cups of buttermilk and let the bowl hang out in your fridge overnight. The next morning, the two ingredients have melded into a sloppy white mass that will be the base of your batter. You mix this with a decidedly un-health-foodish amount of melted butter and the rest of the ingredients and end up with a thick batter that can be spooned onto your hot pan.

Interestingly, the finished product has many of the same good qualities as my fluffy diner pancake. They're good for soaking in syrup (a vital griddle cake quality), they marry well with bacon, or other breakfast meats. They also store incredibly well and are a good snack cold out of the fridge, but can also be enlivened with a quick microwave sojourn. In fact, that's what I do with my pile of cakes: each morning, one or two on a plate get heaped with frozen raspberries and go for a brief spin in the microwave. Some maple syrup gets poured on top and I have a wholesome breakfast.

Same as with the diner pancakes, the newness factor of these has long worn off. My affection for this marvelously solid breakfast recipe remains strong though.

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Fast Food and Carrot Cake

First, I wrote a little love letter to Pret a Manger. You know, a cutesy thing of how a casual acquaintance (rushed tomato, cheese and bacon croissant in the morning) grew into a full-fledged love affair (hoisin duck wrap and chocolate mousse pot for lunch). The back story here is that since I started working at my current company, whose London offices were just two blocks away from a Pret store, I've eaten the chain's food consistently for the last 5 years. Not only do I love their food, I am fully 'sold' on their aesthetics and their advertised brand values.

However, before putting my little note out into the world, I became a little hesitant. I am very aware of my weakness for ecomarketing - I will absolutely purchase a product that's packaged in a brown and green container, over a brightly coloured one. That is what my brain equates with concious consumerism.

Of course it is not. Concious consumerism requires much more than that. It requires an awareness of how the things are made and where they are shipped from. If it is food we're buying, a basic understanding of how it is grown is needed. What pesticides were used on my lettuce? What hormones were pumped into this chicken?

Problem is, I don't have all the facts and realistically, what I end up basing decisions on, is pure emotion. Even when I eat at a restaurant as questionable on all of those points as McDonalds, I can still forget the nasty bits by focusing on my emotional response. How happy I am that my salt and fat cravings can be quickly, and cheaply satisfied. How the never changing texture of the food takes me right back to eating that same burger as when I was a kid. Visions of Happy Meal My Little Ponies start crowding in my head.

So if I can be lulled into the red and yellow fantasy land of Micky D's, did I get duped into promoting (to my VAST and varied audience) what could amount to just another deceitfully unhealthy, ethically ambiguous, albeit cleverly branded fast food store?

And here's where I get to the end, and this week's recipe. When I was moving from London to San Francisco for work, I wrote an email to Pret's customer service. I professed my love, urged them to consider a swift expansion into Northern California and I asked for two recipes for my favorite Pret desserts - their double chocolate mousse and their carrot cake.

Within days I received a lovely note and my two recipes.

I will not question the online customer service skills of the good people at McDonalds Corp, since I have not had the pleasure. I will however, question their willingness to provide me with their Filet o' Fish recipe and my ability to recreate it faithfully.

I have made the below carrot cake several times. By no means can it be considered 'healthy', but it is absolutely delicious, the best carrot cake I have ever had and it tastes exactly the same homemade as in the store. This makes me feel very good about Pret, for a good reason.

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D'Oh (homemade) Butterfingers

Let's not talk about the fact that after three maiden posts, I have been absent from this here blog thingie.

Let's set aside my dissatisfaction with my current photography equipment and it's inability to produce clear, appetizing pictures.

Let's also ignore the fact that this post came about from a Google image search for Simpsons references. (Let's not even ask ourselves why that was happening).

Instead, let me tell you how to fashion a homemade Butterfinger candy.

Start off with this recipe.
Remember that you have butterscotch chips left over from your Compost cookie attempts.
Declare loudly and frequently to your roommate that you are a genius.
Purchase a box of square Ritz crackers and some Skippy smooth peanut butter.
Melt two handfuls of butterscotch chips in a microwave and mix the melted chips with twice as much peanut butter. (The ratio here is endlessly variable!)
Sandwich a dollop of the mix in between two Ritz crackers.
Put a plate of the prepared squares into the freezer to firm up.
Melt some chocolate chips in the microwave.
Spread or drizzle the melted chocolate over the cookies.
Store in an airtight container in the fridge and practice self-restraint.

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What's amazing about these: 

• They are salty, sweet, and literally melt in your mouth, leaving behind a taste of caramelly peanut butter and some bitterness from the chocolate cap - I strongly encourage bittersweet chocolate here.
• They have no spiky or chewy caramel that makes most candy bars feel like an assault on your teeth.
• They're tiny, and a few of them with a cup of tea or coffee feel like a fancy treat. 
• Considering the amount of preservatives in the original ingredients, they're likely to last for a long time in the fridge. 
• Leftover peanut butter/butterscotch mix can be reused as a sandwich spread. 

What's not so great about these:

• Nothing!

***

The esteemed crumble

I underestimated the apple crumble.

I was arrogant enough to attempt a crumble without a recipe. After all, it's just some sugared apples, with a topping of flour, butter and sugar. Dump one on top of the other, stick the mess into a hot oven and take it out when you think it's done, right?

Wrong.

What I got was undercooked apples under soggy coat of sugary flour. It was edible but acted more as a topping to ice cream, rather than the intended reverse. I decided to give the crumble a bit more respect next time around.

Apple crumbles have an unmistakably British association for me. Never a fan of fruit-heavy desserts, I was first converted to the crumble by a London flatmate's girlfriend. Every once in a while she would effortlessly pull together a giant pan of the stuff in what seemed like seconds. We ate it for 'pudding' at the end of our Sunday dinners with vanilla custard out of a carton. Another friend worked at the Harrods food hall and if I dropped by at the end of his shift, one or two apple and blueberry crumbles would find their way into my bag.

I wanted to somehow recreate those two memories. Adding berries to the apples was a no-brainer. It brightens up the filing and makes it more interesting. (Thank you Harrods!) I then looked around for a fool-proof topping recipe. I'm pleased that I was able to find it on that side of the pond - in the Guardian.

Felicity Cloake is a recipe tester and developer at the Guardian's 'Word of Mouth' blog. I found it recently when searching for another English recipe, and became a fan immediately. For each project she consults the who's who of British cookbook authors and combines the best features of each into her final result. Essentially, she did all of the legwork for me, and all I had to do was follow her recipe, and enjoy the best (out of two) crumble I ever made!

Unmixed feelings

Not to overstate things, but when I first learned about egg pie in a New York Times article, it blew my mind. Apparently it is a New Zealand specialty. Most like a quiche encased fully in pie crust, instead of mixing the eggs with cream, they go in whole! When you slice the pie open you are confronted with a startling cross-section of egg whites and yolks. The very best part of the entire article was Melissa Clarke's bastardization of the classic recipe by adding Sriracha sauce to the filling.

The red and green Sriracha bottle is now beloved (by hipsters and foodies) everywhere. Compared to some fanatics I use it sparingly. My bottle has been around for so long that I'm not even sure where I got it from. I have a suspicion that it came with the fridge...

When it comes to eggs though, Sriracha is a necessity for me. Every single fried egg I have prepared in the past couple of years has been embellished with an artistic squirt of the sauce. It cuts the greasiness of the fry-up while distracting from that certain blandness of the egg with a tangy heat.

This is the long-winded way of saying that when I came across this crazy pie, I knew it was meant to be. This pie gets me, I thought.

There was no doubt that it would be fun to attempt this, simply for the novelty of the whole eggs, but would it be tasty?

It would, and it was. Fresh from the oven, the pie is warming and comforting. The crust is flaky and buttery without being oily. There's that heat from the Sriracha and scallions. Yes, the filling is just eggs, but in the funnest, most picnic-appropriate package ever. In fact, if anyone is planning a picnic in the warmer months - invite me and I'll bring one of these along. Your mind will be blown!