pancake day

Today is Shrove Tuesday, and we had pancakes.  We do not observe Lent in any other way, not being practising Christians, and given the rate at which the hens are laying, we will still have plenty of eggs in the next forty days.  We quite often have pancakes anyway, because we like them (or Yorkshire puddings, or anything else made from batter).  But it was pancake day, and I have new crepe pan, so we bought some lemons and observed tradition.

The crepe pan is a real monster, thirty centimetres in diameter.  It is cast iron, made in Coalbrookdale in Shropshire, and is so heavy that I need both hands to lift it for any length of time. When I first unwrapped it and felt the weight, I thought it would serve much the same purpose as an extra-long Maglite, in that you could leave it innocently lying around the kitchen, but it would serve as a pretty good club if you needed to bang a burglar on the head.

I started off small, with a neat little cast iron omelet pan just the right size to make a two egg omelet for one person.  I got that in a sale,with free delivery, and was worried when it arrived that the enamel looked grainy and uneven, and that food would stick.  In practice, once the pan was seasoned things didn't stick, and it has proved just the right size for frying a couple of eggs, or a small amount of onion, or roasting spices.  You can put it in the oven, since the handle is an integral part of the casting rather than plastic, which is handy for finishing some things off, or keeping them warm.  The only snag is that the solid metal handle gets quite hot even when cooking on the hob, not scaldingly hot, but too warm to hold for any length of time, so you need to remember to use an oven glove.

I liked the omelet pan so much, I began to wish I'd bought a crepe pan as well while the sale was on. It is a fiddle trying to turn pancakes in the deep frying pan, because it's not easy to get the spatula under them.  I looked at crepe pans on Amazon, but was put off by user reviews of several models which said the handle fell off (presumably what really happened was that the pan fell off, leaving the handle in the cook's hand).  With a single piece casting nothing is going to fall off.  Then the Aga Cookshop announced a special reduction on all frying pans, plus free delivery, for Pancake Day. Voila, the solid cast iron crepe pan was mine.

This time round I was not put off by the faintly dimpled appearance of the enamel, and after the first effort, the pancakes did not stick.  However, I am finding it tricky running the batter around the pan after ladling it in.  I can manage the first part tilting the pan on the hob, but to run the batter all the way round I need to lift the pan, and to lift the pan I need to use both hands wearing an oven glove (or a towel), and the handle is not at much of an angle to the body of the pan so there isn't much clearance under it.  By the time I've put the batter ladle down, grabbed a towel, and got both hands round the handle, the batter has begun to set where it is.  Perhaps I need one of those little wooden spreading and scraping tools they sell on Amazon (though I am experimenting with a wooden spoon).

After this comes the big one.  The Belgian waffle maker.  I am set on getting one.