Pancake Tuesday

Pancakes come in many varieties - any batter that is cooked in a frying pan or a griddle is a pancake - but the pancake I grew up with, given my English mum, is what is known here as the crepe.

Americans love their pancakes, but the English give their pancakes a whole day!

And that day is today.

In England (and other parts of the English-speaking world), Mardi Gras is Pancake Tuesday, so the "fat" part of the day comes solely from the number of pancakes you can eat.

My answer: a lot. In fact, I can't wait to whip up a batch tonight and serve them up my favorite way. Piping hot with sugar and lashings of lemon juice.

Easy Pancake (Crepe) Batter - 1 to 1 to 1

1 egg to 1 cup of flour to 1 cup of liquid (a mix of water and milk). Whisk all together, then add a dash more water.

Heat your (preferably non-stick) frying pan on high with a bit of butter or oil until it is practically smoking. If you'd like to test whether the pan is hot enough, dip a fork into the batter and flick a tiny bit into the pan. If the batter sizzles immediately, pour a ladleful of batter into the middle of the pan, then tip the pan to evenly coat the bottom of the pan to the edges of the bottom. These cook very very quickly, so keep an eye on them. The pancake is ready to turn when the batter no longer shines and the edges are curling. Flip with a spatula, cook for 1 minute more, then serve immediately.

They really are most delicious directly from the pan, which for me rules out making them for a lot of people in a more formal dinner setting. Keeping them hot in the oven while you cook a whole batch serves the purpose tolerably, but it will also steam them slightly so they lose the gorgeous crisp of a fresh-from-the-pan one.

So to share them with friends, just make them up casually as they sit around the kitchen, and dole them out as they're ready. With plenty of sliced lemon.


As this very simple batter has no sugar or salt in it, these pancakes can also serve as a main course. Wrap around broccoli and melted cheese, sausage and apple, fried onions and peppers.

What's your favorite way to eat a pancrepe?

*Update - check out this link for more information on pancakes and Pancake Tuesday.

Mission 50% Accomplished: Chicken Kiev

Thanks to my friends who mentioned my first post on this subject, I was doubly inspired to give Chicken Kiev another go.

After my last attempt failed in the objective of keeping the butter inside the breast of chicken, I knew I had to try a completely different way.

This time, instead of flattening the chicken and rolling it around the stuffing, I cut a deep pocket in the thickest part of the chicken breast (it looks more like a heart than a butterfly, no?).


I pushed about 1 tablespoon of butter deep into the pocket with the teaspoon of minced garlic and some salt.

Next, I prepared the materials for breading it - egg, flour, and breadcrumbs - and used the egg wash to seal the chicken closed. Dipping my fingers in the eggs, I lined the inner edges of the pocket, pressed them closed, and then smoothed some egg on the outer edge of the opening as well.

Then I dipped everything in flour, egg, and breadcrumbs in that order, taking care that the pocket did not reopen, and if it did, slathering more egg on it and pinching it closed again.

The oven was preheated to 400 F, and I arranged them in my little baker. I buttered the bottom of the dish, and placed a small pat of butter on top as well to melt and brown the outside of the chicken breasts.


I baked for approximately 20-25 minutes, and this is the sizzling joy that emerged:


I added some fresh parsley and a squeeze of lemon, both of which cut through the heaviness of the bread-and-butter crispiness.

And served with Marcella Hazan's cauliflower salad - essentially boiled cauliflower doused in olive oil, salt and pepper:


When J sliced into his Chicken Kiev, butter did indeed ooze out. Yay, success! But as you have noticed, I named this post Mission 50% Accomplished. The butter leaked out of my chicken in the baking process (as I suspected when the dish came out of the oven - see how much butter is glistening in the "just out of the oven pic" above?). But this time as last time, breaded buttery chicken just can't go wrong. I think this dish is ready to make it to the big time, that is, I would happily serve this to friends coming round.

Happy Valentine's Day

Amelie's Kitchen

Speaking of Amélie, there is one more way the film influenced me.

Behold, Amélie's kitchen:


Behold, some of my kitchen things:







Behold the mighty power of suggestion.

Risotto-Stuffed Chicken

The film Amélie had a tremendous effect on me. I studied abroad in Paris, so the sparkling fairy-tale world of Paris was familiar yet magical. The way Amélie ameliorated the situation of those around her made me laugh.

And Mr. Bretodeau's love of a roast chicken has had me and J roasting chickens most weekends now for years.

On a recent Saturday morning, we had the following conversation:

Husband: I'd really like to make risotto today.
Me: We're roasting a chicken. [wheels turning in head "do not want to turn down lovely risotto by hubby; also, sort of want to try something new"] Maybe we could stuff the chicken with risotto!

Done and done. J made the zucchini and pea risotto from Everyday Food, but we waited on adding all the veggies so that we could stuff the chicken with plain risotto (I imagined the green veggies getting mighty soggy in the cavity of the chicken).

Over the course of half an hour, J fried onions in butter, added the arborio rice, and cooked it while stirring constantly with cups of chicken broth and 1/2 to 1 cup of white wine.

We left it al dente because I thought it would cook more in the oven with the chicken, but it came out just as al dente as it went in - so do cook the risotto all the way before stuffing the chicken.

I rinsed and patted the 5lb chicken, stuffed it with as much risotto as would fit (possibly two cups cooked), then poured 2 tbsp melted butter over the chicken and salted and peppered it.

Then we roasted it for an hour in a 400 degree oven.

It worked out quite nicely:


See the risotto peeking out at the upper right-hand corner of the pic? This is about the only pic where the risotto coming out the cavity looks as lovely as it was instead of...a bit off color.

The risotto stuffing developed a golden and crunchy crust on the outside, and absorbed a great deal of chicken flavor. I also noticed that the chicken was incredibly succulent and I wondered if that was one of the main points of stuffing. Maybe this is standard chicken-roasting knowledge for some, but it seems that stuffing the chicken means that fewer juices escape or evaporate.

J added the peas and zucchini to the remaining risotto and we tucked in. A delicious weekend lunch for two.

Coconut Milk

I recently made my favorite curry again (with chicken and sweet potato - this is my favorite iteration). The dish is so unbelievably scrumptious that I started to get suspicious. The coconut milk is the cornerstone of the recipe, and I said to my husband, "Coconut milk must be bad for you."

"Oh yes," he said. "Very bad."

Wait! I know that coconut milk is fatty. But does that mean it's unhealthy? After all, avocados are fatty (we know how I feel about those) and their fat is lauded.

Must I relegate my healthy, tasty, pseudo-vegetarian curry full of fruits and vegetables to the "only-make-it-occasionally" category of meals (along with my favorite cream- and cheese-based meals like pasta carbonara, alfredo, macaroni and cheese)?

I'm so comfortable now with making curries that it's a dish I can riff on. I love dishes I can make my own. I recently made white fish coconut curry, again applauding myself for healthy deliciousness, and was planning on incorporating coconut milk into my next Asian-inspired soup filled with spinach and tofu and sprouts.

But if adding a can of coconut milk is akin to dropping a stick of butter into my clear healthy soup, why bother?

Well.

This article about coconut oil is fascinating. Again, yes, it is a very very fatty food. It is full of saturated fats. But not all saturates are created equal. The article says the molecular structure of coconut fats renders them easily converted to energy instead of stored in the body.

In addition, there may be tremendous health benefits to coconut oil due to its high content of lauric acid, contributing to its antiviral, antimicrobial, etc. properties (being explored in the fight against AIDS).

Finally, and here's the rub, the reasons we fear coconut fats may be linked to the powers of the corn and soy lobbies (also cited in this article). I know it's all internet research and I must take it with a grain of salt, but the ubiquity of corn and corn-based products in our diets does speak to the power of the corn lobby.

And if there is truth to that point, then I can believe the whole article and coconut, therefore, is healthy!

What?

Okay. Suffice it to say I feel armed with enough (selective) evidence in favor of coconut oils and fats that I'm going to keep using it regularly in my cooking. It has been used in cooking for an awfully long time - much longer than, say, hydrogenated oils.

Carrot-Ginger Soup with Martha

Once I start talking about Martha Stewart's Cooking School, I'm not going to be able to stop. It's everything I had hoped it would be. Yes, it's teaching me things I've never known how to do (more to come on that in later posts), but more importantly, it's been helping me improve things I have been doing for years.

My recent carrot soup provides a perfect a case-in-point.

I have been making vegetable soup since college, when I bought a $10 enamel pot from the dollar store and a $10 hand-held blender from CVS. I would boil up vegetables, drop in the Knorr cubes, and whir the white wand in the veggies when they had lost all shape. The results were tasty enough to repeat again and again, but my soups were always very very thick, like baby food. With lumps. You could pile the soup into your bowl, and no amount of added water / broth made it any smoother.

For a while, I attributed the lumpiness of my soup to the handheld wand. But when I got a real counter top blender, my soups still ended up thick and lumpy even as I followed recipes to a tee. No more could I just throw together a pile of vegetables as I had to get to the bottom of this. I now measured leeks by the cupful, checked the weight of added potatoes or zucchini, added exactly the right amount of broth, and still the results were frustrating.

Then I opened up Martha. This is what leapt out at me: "Pass [pureed] soup through a fine sieve into a clean pot."

Why have I never read that anywhere before?? It's so obvious - that's when you know it is good advice - but it was also completely revelatory to me.

I had to try it immediately. Luckily, I had inspiration in the shape of a brand new home-made loaf of bread (thank you, J:):

I used Martha's general quantities - 1 onion, 1 inch ginger, 1 lb carrots, 4 cups of broth, and this is what I ended up with:

1. Fry 2 shallots and 1 inch of fresh ginger in 1 tablespoon of butter (I think this may be "sweating" them, but still not sure what that really means) until softened.

2. Add 1 pound of fresh washed chopped carrots and four cups of chicken broth.

3. Boil 15-20 minutes until carrots have softened, and then blend in batches.

4. Pass puree through sieve!


At this point, though, something was missing. Carrots can be very watery in flavor, ergo the soup was dull and watery-tasting. I added a pinch of cayenne which certainly added some excitement, but it didn't pull everything together.

I looked in my cupboard and saw the jar of molasses I had bought recently to make ginger cookies. I added 1 teaspoon, and the earthy heft of flavor and dash of sweetness were just the ticket!

I served with a dollop of sour cream, parsley, and some sumac sprinkled on top. But the cayenne and molasses were really the key here - definitely try this sometime.