foodierudy

I love pancakes.

I’ve been searching for the perfect pancake recipe for a while now. I grew up with Dutch-style pancakes, which Dad would cook for us sometimes on Saturday evenings - thick, heavy pancakes the size of dinner plates, studded with raisins, chunks of tinned pineapple, or pieces of apple for Mum and us kids, and bacon and cheese for Dad (a man’s pancake!). A typical recipe would be 1:1:1 - 1 cup of flour to 1 cup of milk to 1 egg - even I could remember that!

When I started cooking professionally, I came across crepes - the delicate, thin French-style pancakes, which were great with lemon juice and sugar (or nutella!). Good, but I need more substance for breakfast!

While working at Deer Valley Resort in Utah, I came across fluffy American style pancakes, cooked on a flat grillplate - a ladle of batter, a sprinkling of blueberries, flip over, onto a plate, drizzle in maple syrup and eat! The breakfast chefs would cook some for me when I finished my bread-baking shift at 8am. A great big stack of pancakes, a mug of black coffee - good fuel for a couple of hours skiing before heading off to bed to get a “night’s” sleep…

Since then I’ve tried various other recipes, before settling with a buttermilk pancake recipe I picked up while working at a small country hotel in NZ. Buttermilk gives a nice subtle flavour to the ‘cakes, and with the baking soda makes the “crumb” lighter.

However, they were still too rubbery. One way to get them more fluffy was to separate the eggs, whip the whites soft-peak, and fold them through the batter just before cooking.

Then I came across Nigel Slater’s recipe for Orange & Ricotta Pancakes. He’s reduced the flour, and added a tub of ricotta. Perfect. Moist, tender, rich, and fluffy - oh so fluffy!

Orange & Ricotta Pancakes

Serves 2 for a good Saturday brunch

250 g Ricotta

4 Tblsp caster sugar

3 eggs, whites and yolks separated

1 orange, zested

50 g flour

Mix the ricotta, caster sugar and yolks in a bowl. Stir the orange zest into the mix, then the flour. In another bowl, whisk the egg whites stiff, and fold into the batter.

Fry golden in butter, preferably using a non-stick frying pan.

Serve with your favourite toppings (mine include streaky bacon, fried till crisp, and whatever berry fruit I have, or mango, all drizzled with honey!)

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 31st, 2008 at 2:42 pm and is filed under Cooking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.