Of All Sorts of Pancakes

When I grew up, lunch was the biggest meal of the day, and it was always a warm meal cooked from scratch by my mother. Some lunches were more elaborate than others, but some of the most simple ones were my favorites when coming home from school: Spiegelei auf Brot (fried egg on rye bread), Eierpfannkuchen mit Blaubeersoße (egg pancakes with blueberry sauce), and Kartoffelpfannkuchen mit Apfelmus (potato pancakes with applesauce).

When my mom made potato pancakes, it was a labor of love because it always took a while to prepare: using a box grater, she finely handgrated a bunch of raw, peeled potatoes, mixed them with an egg, a little salt, and fried them in butter–she always used butter for frying–until they were browned and crisp on the outside. They were dense and substantial and served with apple sauce. Try the following recipe and see if you can't be a convert to potato pancakes:

Kartoffelpfannkuchen (Potato Pancakes)

Ingredients:

1 lb. potatoes, peeled and grated

1 large egg (or larger than large egg…:))

1/2 tsp salt

1/4-1/2 grated onion (optional)

butter for frying

Preparation:

Peel and grate potatoes. Add a slightly beaten egg, salt and a little chopped onion, if desired. Mix everything together. Heat butter (or a little oil) in a frying pan and ladle batter into pan. Fry until golden brown on each side and serve with applesauce.

So, these were the pancakes of my childhood–they were definitely lunch fare for me. Now on the very first day I ever woke up in America, my then-future-mother-in-law Dorothy asked me what I wanted for breakfast and asked, "Pancakes?" I responded, kind of confused, "For breakfast?" Little did I know what American pancakes were like. I was soon to find out. Dorothy's pancakes were golden brown, fluffy and light, and often made with Bisquick. She served them with fresh fruit and syrup, a couple of strips of crisp bacon or sausage patties on the side. This was a tasty breakfast and for a number of years my husband and I made pancakes using Bisquick often. But one day, after we had become parents and were trying to feed our toddler for breakfast and didn't have any Bisquick in the house, we discovered that you can actually make pancakes totally from scratch. (Duh!) It was the day we discovered Deborah Madison's recipe for oatmeal pancakes in her book, "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone." This has been our absolute favorite pancake recipe for breakfast ever since. Here it is:

Oatmeal Pancakes

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups rolled oats

2 cups buttermilk

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

2 Tbsp. brown sugar or maple syrup

1/4 cup canola oil

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 cup flour

1/4 tsp. grated nutmeg

1/2 tsp. baking soda

Preparation:

Stir the oats and buttermilk together and let stand for 20 minutes. Beat the eggs with the vanilla, sugar, and oil, then stir in the soaked oats. Combine the dry ingredients and add them to the oat mixture as well. For each pancake, drop 1/4 cup batter onto a heated griddle or skillet and cook over a medium-low heat until the tops are covered with holes. Turn the cakes over and cook the second side. Because of the moisture in this batter, the cakes need to cook slowly, but turn them only once.

Just for good measure, I should probably throw in a couple more pancake recipes, so that I have all of the recipes we've enjoyed in the past in one neat and tidy location.

Mutti's Eierpfannkuchen (Mom's Egg Pancakes)

Ingredients for approximately 2 (8-in.) pancakes:

1 large or extra large egg

1/2 cup whole milk

1/3 flour

dash of salt

pat of butter

Preparation:

Blend egg, milk, flour and salt together in a bowl. Melt a pat of butter in a small (8-10 in. in diameter) non-stick pan. Ladle batter into the pan and brown pancake on both sides until it has a nice golden color. I personally have always liked Eierpfannkuchen a little bit more on the pale side of golden. To serve, my mom used to sprinkle the pancake with a very small amount of sugar and roll it up. This is heavenly! It always amazes me how something so simple can taste so good.

Variation:

My favorite variation to the plain and simple egg pancake has always been Apfelpfannkuchen, the egg pancake with apples. To make Apfelpfannkuchen, peel and core an apple and slice it thinly. Then, before adding pancake batter to the frying pan, arrange thin slices of apple on the bottom of the pan and sauté lightly to soften the apple. You can get really creative when arranging the apple slices and make pretty patterns. Then add the egg pancake batter and finish browning the pancake as described above. Sprinkle with a little sugar if you like and do not roll it up.

There are more variations to the egg pancake, but I better leave that for another day. :)

Can't-Sleep Emergency-School-Lunch Tuna Salad

For some reason I can't sleep. There are too many things on my mind, and one of them is not having figured out school lunches for tomorrow. I didn't get to the grocery store, but with a few cans of tuna in the pantry, I thought I'd make myself useful at this time of day and make a tuna salad for school.

Here's what I tossed together:

1 6-oz. can water-packed tuna, drained and flaked

1 hard-boiled egg, chopped

1 stalk celery, minced

1 scallion, minced

1/4 cup cilantro, minced

2 Tbsp. canola mayonnaise

1 Tbsp. sour cream (only added because I didn't have enough mayonnaise…)

1 Tbsp. Dijon mustard

sprinkling of kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

The first taste test was encouraging. I really love the fresh cilantro in the mix. The salad will be refrigerated until the morning when I will put it on sandwich bread. Hopefully, the flavors will blend even better and be a tasty little lunch for the girly-whirls.

Somewhere, I have a recipe for tuna salad that is entirely dairy-free. I'll try to find it in the morning and make that recipe for comparison. :)

Update: Just wanted to add that the girls and dear hubby really liked the tuna salad and gobbled it all up, leaving nothing for me to taste, not even a teaspoon. I guess that's a good sign.

No Apple Fritters but Parmesan Spinach Cakes

This was a challenging day. First of all, the temperature was again -20˚F at 7:15 this morning for the fourth day in a row. Not even the dogs wanted to be outside to do their business. Then, after dropping the kids off at school, I swung by the old Donut Hut for the second time this week in search of apple fritters. Because of the deep freeze we're in, I've had a hankering all week for apple fritters, and all I needed were six fritters, four for our family and two for the folks next doors. I got there at 7:38 a.m. and they were already sold out. Big bummer.

At 10 a.m. I had an appointment at the chiropractor and as I backed out of the driveway, my car slid on the ice and knocked over the trash can. Trash hadn't been picked up, yet, and so the can fell over and spilled half of its contents onto the road. Under pressure to get to my appointment on time, I now faced trash on the street. I put on my hat and mittens and started collecting our trash from the icy road… Suffice it to say that I was very frustrated and, unfortunately, in a fit of anger, kicked the garbage can, which made my right toe hurt really bad… I'm sure I made myself the spectacle of the day for the neighbors across the street.

After the chiropractor, things started getting better, though. Caro, whose mother is my cousin, came for tea around noon, and I decided that we needed a little more sustenance than just tea. So I prepared a dish I've been wanting to try for a while: spinach cakes. I found the recipe in Eating Well magazine and thought it might make a really nice little lunch for the girls to take to school some day. Today was the trial run. Caro and I both loved it, and so did my husband who stole a bite or two from my plate, and the only variation one might want to try is to prepare this dish and pour it into a crust, kind of like quiche. (This is Caro's idea.) I like it without crust, however, and think it's a bit healthier that way, too. Here's the recipe from Eating Well, October 2008 issue:

Parmesan Spinach Cakes:

12 ounces fresh spinach

1/2 cup part-skim ricotta cheese or low-fat cottage cheese

1/2 cup finely shredded Parmesan ( I used Romano which is a little more pungent)

2 large eggs, beaten

1 clove garlic, minced

1/4 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. freshly ground pepper

Preheat oven to 400˚F. Pulse spinach in three batches in a food processor until finely chopped. Transfer to a medium bowl. Add ricotta (or cottage cheese), Parmesan, eggs, garlic, salt and pepper; stir to combine.

Coat 8 cups of a muffin pan with cooking spray. Divide the spinach mixture evenly among the 8 cups.

Bake the spinach cakes until set, about 20 minutes. Let stand for 5 minutes. Loosen the edges with a knife and turn out onto a clean cutting board or large plate. Serve warm, sprinkled with more Parmesan, if desired.