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Can we talk semantics for a minute? In a past life, I was a teacher. Specifically, most often, an English teacher. An important lesson in writing is the power of the words you choose. No matter what you are writing, or saying, the words are important. Let’s take food for an example. If I say “crepe,” I’m sure an image is conjured for you of a fancy French breakfast (or dinner) with thin, light golden pancakes delicately rolled around a sweet or savory filling. If I told you to make crepes, you may think “But I need a special pan, and those are tricky to flip, and the batter is hard to mix.”
Now, if I say, “egg pancakes” it suddenly becomes “Oh, pancakes? I can make pancakes.” Suddenly, it may not be so daunting. You may now picture a diner with an all-day breakfast menu serving breakfast on platters with more food than you need all day.
And here-in lies the rub. For my whole life, I’ve been eating egg pancakes. But when I say that to strangers, they say “Huh?” so I have to switch words and say, “You know, like crepes.” Then all of a sudden, those pancakes become recognizable…legit, even. That always feels like a betrayal because egg pancakes are an integral part of our family recipe history. Busha made them by the pile for Christmas Eve. I stood there and watched, and then learned to stir, and flip, and let my dad come and steal one for “quality control.”
They are a beautiful thing. You can make them simply and serve them like regular pancakes with some syrup. If you want them to taste like my childhood, you serve them with *gasp* Karo Dark Corn Syrup (organic, free-range foodies need not apply for tasting them). Now we serve them with fresh fruit, or apple sauce and powdered sugar, but sometimes that also feels like a betrayal. The corn syrup, for people who didn’t grow up with it, is definitely an acquired taste, one I still enjoy on occasion.
Whatever you want to call them, they are not hard to make. You need 4 ingredients.
Beat the eggs until they are uniform, whites mixed completely with yolks. They don’t have to be super foamy, you just want one yellow-y color.
Then, add in half the flour and mix until only a few lumps remain. You’ll get the lumps out later, trust me.
Add the salt.
Whisk in half the milk
Then the rest of the flour
And finally the rest of the milk.
That’s it. It should take maybe 3 minutes! Nothing fancy at all. Just make sure you have all the dry ingredients scraped from the bottom and sides before you start to cook, and you’re all set with mixing.
Then you just need a frying pan. If you can multi-task, using 2 pans makes it go quicker, but one pan will do. Just a plain, ol’ frying pan, no crepe pan. Spray with non-stick spray and heat over medium heat. Pour a ladle of batter (about 1/4 cup if you must measure) onto the hot pan. This is the ONE AND ONLY tricky part, and based on these pictures, you can tell we don’t worry about our edges, and you shouldn’t either. You have to tip the pan around a little to spread the batter. These do have to be thin, so you want an even, thin layer in the pan, even if it is not a perfect circle.
Look at it this way, with the uneven edges, you can play the “cloud game.” You know, when you look at a cloud and say what you see in the shape of the cloud? Look for shapes in your pancakes. It will help pass the time as you wait to flip them. Before you flip them, the edges should look set and dry, and you may have bubbles forming in the top of the batter, with the middle of the batter still a little wet looking. It takes 1-2 minutes per side to cook.
Then flip, and you are another 1-2 minutes away from delicious.
Like I said, you don’t need to worry about those edges. Rolling them up totally makes that problem disappear. Enjoy!
Egg Pancakes
1 1/2 cups milk (even skim works)
1 cup all purpose flour
3 eggs
3/4 tsp. salt
This menu is for the rest of the month. Please email me for orders. Orders taken only for a radius of 15-20 miles around Dearborn, Michigan. Orders can be picked up by you or delivered for an additional $3.00 charge. Thank you for your support.
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“You have to get obsessed and stay obsessed.” John Irving.
That quote is from my favorite John Irving book, The Hotel New Hampshire. Usually if I like something, I really like it; some would say I get obsessed. I didn’t start out liking the Food Network show Chopped, but it grew on me. The premise, in case you don’t know, is a competition cooking show where they are given a basket with 5 unknown ingredients and must cook from those, adding other things from the “pantry.” Well, now, I watch it–a lot. Even repeat episodes, because if I watch the new ones, invariably I am paying more attention to the techniques of the person I am rooting for and not to the other chefs, so I’ll watch when it comes around again, trying to see what I’ve missed. You can also learn so many tips and techniques from the judge banter on that show. So, Chopped grew on me so much that it is now how I regard dinner, which also helps a lot with “What will we have for dinner today?” I don’t know. Go grab 5 ingredients.
Using the Chopped game plan, there is always something to cook. This recipe came from that plan. I knew there was corn in the fridge that needed to be used up. There was also a lonely shepherd pepper (a variety of sweet red pepper) and sweet potatoes that had seen better days. Even though it was the middle of July, what came to mind was soup. Specifically, corn chowder, which normally gets it’s creamy texture from regular potatoes, but we didn’t have any. Why not try combine the sweetness of all three of these ingredients? To round out our “basket” I discovered there was chicken andouille sausage in the freezer. We have recently been trying to be more vegetarian, and there are still some oddities lurking, so the sausage was added to bring smoky spice to the party. The usual suspects, onion and garlic, are always around, as well as vegetable broth.
So, the sweet potatoes got into the oven to roast, the corn was shucked, and the shepherd peppers were char-roasted on top of the stove. A note here…If I can nearly set something on fire in the kitchen just for fun, that automatically becomes a better recipe. Roasting peppers on top of the stove, over the gas flame, creates a deeper flavor and brings out the sweetness of the peppers. If you are making a vegetable soup, it always helps if you roast your vegetables and then simmer them in the broth you will use. It helps to layer the flavors.
It seems like there isn’t a meal I cook without chopping an onion. This soup is no different, and carrots were also used to bring flavor to the broth. These were added to the dutch oven to soften and caramelize while the vegetables roasted. The andouille was chopped and added to the onions to rend off the fat, again, layer those flavors!
As fun as it is to char those peppers, you don’t want the black bits in the soup. The easiest way to take care of that is to put the peppers in a bowl and cover them so the burnt skin will steam and loosen. Then you can just rub it off with a paper towel or the edge of your knife before you chop them up.
The tricky part was that I wasn’t forward thinking. I wanted the andouille to flavor the onions and carrots, but I didn’t want it to be lost when I had to put some of the soup in the blender later to create the creamy goodness. There usually isn’t a meal where I don’t go “Darn, I should have…” And this was the one mistake in this. Cook the andouille FIRST in the pot, then take it out and add the onions and carrots to soften in the rendered fat. Then add the sausage back in later. *face-palm* Oh, well. I’ll do it right next time. (And it’s right in the steps in the recipe below)
Sweet Potato Corn Chowder
1 large carrot, peeled and diced
2 ears of sweet corn cut off the cobs (you can also use frozen corn kernels, about 2 cups)
1 medium onion, diced
2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped into 1/2 in. pieces
1 shepherd pepper (or red bell pepper) roasted and diced
1 tbsp. olive oil (for roasting potatoes)
1 tbsp. olive oil (for pot with onions and carrots)
4 oz. andouille sausage chopped (smoked kielbasa or ham would also be delicious in this)
4 cups vegetable broth
1 clove garlic, minced
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tsp. Cajun seasoning mix (Such as Emeril’s Bayou Blast or Old Bay. I used about a teaspoon of both) *See seasoning note below recipe
*Seasoning note: Creole seasoning can be made from this blend of spices, and stored: