Shrove

Today was pancake day.

I’m not going to say a great deal about it really. Only that initially I forgot all about it. When I remembered I quickly learned a very important lesson.

Don’t eat pancakes you buy from the store. Make your own. I tried some from a supermarket in Stratford which shall remain un-named. Both, the pancakes and the supermarket. Rather than limit my disdain for these appalling creations as marketed by a particular chain I thought it best to condemn them generally. If you would like to nominate some exceptions to this general, and dare I say it, important rule then please comment away!

Making pancakes is easy. Flour, milk and egg. you can fuss about with extras like salt and chocolate chips but really I reccommend that you avoid detailed recipes. All that they lead to is mild panic that you may have added 220g instead of 230g of one ingredient or another. You can’t go too wrong with pancakes.

Take some flour. Plain is best but I have used self-raising too and I’m still breathing. When I say some I mean the sort of amount you would put of a favourite cereal in a breakfast bowl. Some. That’s going to be enough for one person like me and maybe one and a half, or perhaps two, persons of more austere appetite like you. When you have some flour put it in a measuring jug. If you have more than you can fit in a measuring jug then stop eating so much cereal. What are you eating out of? A salad bowl?

Crack an egg and drop it on top of your small mound of flour. yes, the one in the measuring jug. Don’t mix it in yet as this will make a sort of flour-egg glue which will stick to the sides of your measuring jug unpleasantly.

Pour on some milk. Again some. I like the breakfast analogy because that’s how much milk is in some. You know how you pour milk directly onto your cereal in the morning without measuring it? That’s some ‘milk’. Pour that much milk on top of your flour and egg.

Now mix it all up. the toughest part about this stage is not doing it so vigorously that you cover yourself with soft clouds of flour and splashes of eggy milk. Eggy milk doesn’t just rinse off, you’ll have to wash your clothes. Keep the splashes in the pancake mix!

Ok, while you are mixing it up you will learn about the consistency of the mix you have just made. If it is the consistency of milk then you may have poured the milk into an empty bowl rather than the one with the flour and egg in it. Try again please. If your mix is too dry then, again, you may have poured your milk in the wrong bowl or you have just worked out why your cereal is so crunchy all the time!

If the mix is too thick add a little more milk, mix it up and try again. If it is too thin, drop in a little bit of flour. This is actually quite tough to incorporate so I reccomend trying to cook your mix if you think it is too thin before you start trying to add more flour.

Cook a small pancake. Eat said pancake while adjusting the temperature of the pan/griddle and adding salt if required. Remember, you can always add more salt, you cannot take salt away! Be sparing.

That’s it, you now know what to do. Don’t buy them in the stores, make your own. Preferably thin like crepes with lemon and granulated sugar. Mmmm.

Word of the Day: Cachalot
- noun

1 – A sperm whale