I am going through a pancake phase. I have always liked pancakes, and every now and then persuade the Systems Administrator that we could have them for lunch, traditional British style ones, with lemon and sugar, and 'for lunch' meaning 'constituting lunch', given that we don't normally eat puddings and don't really feel like filling up on pancakes after consuming a main course.
When we were on holiday we visited a nineteenth century working mill, and I bought a bag of buckwheat flour in the shop, which sold nothing but umpteen different types of flour in seductive plain paper bags. The flour was not actually milled on site, since the nineteenth century equipment did not meet twenty-first century standards of food hygiene, but I wanted a souvenir. The sight of those Archimedes' screws and Victorian boulters had put me in the mood for buying crushed grain.
The packet of buckwheat flour sat in the cupboard, because I did not know what to do with it. Occasionally I would think I must do something, and sometimes the SA would remind me that I needed to use it. About the only use of buckwheat flour on the internet seemed to be pancakes, and I got as far as downloading an American recipe for the thick fluffy ones, about the size of a side plate, that you are supposed to make into a pile and smother with maple syrup, blueberries, or both. The quantities were all given in cups, and one of the ingredients was buttermilk, so the American pancakes remained purely theoretical.
Then in an attempt to buy a cookery book for my niece's birthday I ordered one on pancakes. All the books I looked at that were specifically written for children seemed to major on cakes and sweet stuff, and while I enjoyed making fairy buns as a child, my brother and his wife are keen on healthy eating, and their offspring are a lot slimmer than I was at their age. A book of mainly cake wasn't going to fit in with the family's eating habits. Pancakes, on the other hand, seemed a good idea for an eight year old interested in cooking. You get a result reasonably quickly and without endless tedious prep, they come in savoury as well as sweet flavours, and you don't have to make a vast amount of batter in any one go.
I misjudged the book. I avoided the American title that had all the measurements in cups, and a style so bright and breezy that Tonstant Weader would definitely have been thwowing up all over the kitchen before hurling the book away with an exclamation of revulsion. I failed to notice that the book I chose instead was sponsored by a manufacturer of crepe and waffle machines. In my defence, I was not feeling very well when I chose it. Since I wasn't proposing to buy my niece a waffle making machine, I didn't feel I could give her the book.
So I kept it, and after reading it conceived a violent desire for a Belgian waffle maker. Gaufres were one of the treats of childhood holidays in Brittany, bought from seafront stalls, and the discovery that I could make them at home was irresistible. The Systems Administrator thought the idea hilarious, which I found inexplicable until the SA had explained that Belgian waffle makers were a running gag in a satirical online magazine that the SA subscribes to. I'm not sure whether that makes it more or less likely that I'll get one for my birthday, but I've found the model I want on the John Lewis website: it has detachable plates for ease of cleaning, and enough room for the batter to expand.
In the meantime I have been making savoury galettes in a frying pan. The batter is very similar to traditional English pancake batter as taken from the Good Housekeeping cookery book, with two eggs and four ounces of flour to half a pint of milk, but you substitute buckwheat for half the flour, and whisk a tablespoon of melted butter into the mix. The ham and cheese topping is added as soon as you turn the pancake over, and does pretty much melt by the time the second side is cooked. The first ones keep quite happily in the warming oven while you finish cooking, and the batter without the addition of savoury bits makes a nice sweet pancake. The spare ones keep overnight in the fridge, and reheat perfectly well. I added a few specks of butter to stop them becoming dry, remembering that Dutch pancake houses always serve a pat of butter with their sweet pancakes.
We had ham and cheese pancakes, and the following week bacon and cheese pancakes. After that the book starts to run out of savoury flavours that the SA would eat, since spinach and seafood figure prominently. I fancy trying my hand at blinis, and there is a recipe for baking powder raised small pancakes with courgette that sounds promising. Thinking back to our Dutch holidays, cheese and some sort of preserved pig meat did seem to be the traditional savoury pancake fillings. Out of curiosity I had a look at the menu on the website of the London restaurant chain My Old Dutch (I was amazed that it was still going. It must be over twenty-five years since I ate at the Holborn branch), but they had extended the range beyond ham and cheese by dint of listing various mixtures that sounded more like pizza toppings, some of which no self-respecting Italian would recognise. So I tried Googling Dutch pancake houses, and as I suspected the choices were mainly variations on kaas, spek and ham. If you want more choice than that, go sweet. Apple and sultana is a favourite.
Buckwheat makes a pleasant batter. I've heard it described as 'nutty', but don't detect any particular nut flavour myself. It makes a less dense pancake than one hundred per cent white plain flour, and happily takes up the flavours of whatever it is served with in a convincing pancake-like fashion. Which is just as well, since I bought a one kilo bag of flour, and at fifty grammes a go that equates to a lot of pancakes.
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