PANCAKES
You know another thing I love? Pancakes! I mean who doesn’t
love pancakes? The North Americans and pro the rest of the world have theirs
smeared with syrup, the French with their delicate cooking prefer a very thin
crust folded with either sweet or savory filling. I have perfected a recipe
that I have been making for as long as I can remember. Probably, my mother
taught it to me but I forget. You see,
By the time I am 60, I could confidently say I’d been making and eating pancakes 90% of my life. However, I just learned fairly recently that those flour wraps I made to eat with my chicken sauce were actually British Pancakes. First(much long ago) I thought they were ordinary pancakes. Apparently what the world recognizes as pancakes are thick, fluffy slabs of flour stacked up and most likely drizzled with syrup. So, I just called them Nigerian pancakes, however that name seemed to be taken by a more savoury recipe calling for sliced peppers and onion. Then, (quite recently) I thought they were crepes, apparently that refers to very thin slabs of batter eaten folded with filling. My recipe, I learned is more like the british pancakes than any other. I can serve it plain, with syrup, icing sugar, whipped cream or a savory sauce. Sometimes I have to adjust or totally remove the sugar when I’m making them for my dad
Sorry about the long story, if you just need to get to the recipe, but this is actually the fun part of being a food writer. You get to tell stories that don’t put too much pressure on you. So here I am typing away at 2 am in the morning. I have work tomorrow(I say tomorrow coz I don’t regard it as the next day until I see light or I’ve slept)
Also forgive my local measurement s and ingredients; I try to make my recipes as flexible as possible. One reason I couldn’t be a scientist. No precision.
Most people use a little melted butter in their pancake or crepe recipes. I have tried it and it resulted in a thicker, gummier, cakier pancake than I had hoped for. So I don’t add any fat to the batter.
Finally…. Here it is.
Ingredients
2 cups flour
3 eggs, beaten
Sugar to taste. I use ½ cup for sweet pancakes and 1/8 cup for savory ones.
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 cups milk. You can mix liquid milk but I prefer to mix powdered milk with water butter or margarine for frying.
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 cups milk. You can mix liquid milk but I prefer to mix powdered milk with water butter or margarine for frying.
Method
· Sieve the flour into a large baking bowl
· Add the salt and sugar.
· Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and add the beaten eggs.
· Add half the milk.
· Beat well until smooth and lump free.
· Add some more milk according to your desired consistency and stir.
· Lightly grease a frying pan with a little butter. Wait till the pan is hot then pour a little batter and tilt the pan so the batter evenly and thinly coats the pan. Cook until set and lightly golden.
· Turn the pancake with a fish slice or toss it in the air if you know how.
· Put in a plate and finish frying the rest of the batter.
Serve rolled up with sweet or savory filling.
Sweet Filling
You can fill with jam or cut up fruits and whipped cream
Savory Filling
Fill with any vegetable or meat based sauce. Try any of my stir fried sauces. Most of them are wonderful in pancakes. Here is my cabbage and chicken sauce: chicken sauce
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