Caribbean Chicken
I had planned to do a Chinese New Year dinner tonight in anticipation of the Lunar New Year on Sunday. Alas, a power outage, downed wires, closed freeways, 30 minutes just to get out of the parking lot at work, and another 15 minutes to travel the two miles home did not really leave me in a mood to be creative. Surly?!? MOI?!? You bet.
Fortunately, my ill-temper left quickly. We went out and removed a huge branch that had broken off from a tree in the front. Well... we got it out of the street, at least. It's going to take a bit more to "remove" it completely. Just not today.
Feeling slightly better - but still not overly creative - I went for the easy route; Caribbean Chicken.
The chicken was already in the fridge, the inspiration for the Caribbean bent was Sarah's Sea Salt. Savory Salt with Caribbean Spices. It was a gift from a friend and just sitting on the counter waiting to be used.
Opening the tin, the first thing I smelled were the scents of the Caribbean; nutmeg, allspice, pepper... I wanted to really liberally rub it on the chicken and had to remind myself that the first ingredient was S-A-L-T. It's really good. Really flavorful. And Really Salt. I used it sparingly.
I browned the chicken and then added a splash of Wegman's Caribbean sauce. (I picked it up because it's one of the only sauces I could find that wasn't loaded with high fructose corn syrup. The sauce itself is "okay". It mixed well with Sarah salt.)
I then popped the chicken in the oven to finish. Rice and broccoli finished the plate.
The Olympics are starting soon. I think a baked brie wedge with caramalized figs is going to be just the thing for the Opening Ceremonies.
Oh. And maybe another 8" of snow on Monday!
Life is good!
Clam Chowder
This has been just one of the most wonderful of days. The non-stop (and still falling) snow has really brought me back to those 5 years I lived at Lake Tahoe. Definitely those thrilling days of yesteryear. Three, four, and five-day snowstorms were not uncommon with storms dropping 10+ feet of snow equally normal. Granted, living in the mountains is a bit different than living in the Philadelphia suburbs, but the lessons are the same. Keep enough food in the house for a few days, shovel when you can, and sit back and enjoy it. Light a fire if you have a fireplace, cook some great meals, slow down and enjoy life.
It's what winter is all about. That in-your-face reminder that it is winter. Slow down and enjoy life.
Slowing down and enjoying life have been at the top of our list the past few days. Today we had steel-cut oats for breakfast, last night's pot pie for lunch, and clam chowder in home made bread boules for dinner. Victor made a Cannoli Cake that we'll have in an hour or so. (And I'll post that later.) We're eating well.
About noon I went out and shoveled a foot of snow from the driveway. By the time I finished, there was already an inch of snow behind me covering the drive. There should easily be another foot out there by the time we wake up tomorrow. I love it!
Cybil is having the time of her life. She's Parnelli Snow Dog running and rolling and having the time of her life. I love her enthusiasm.
Back to food...
The Clam Chowder we had tonight was pretty basic. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just a good, honest chowder.
New England Clam Chowder
- 2 6-1/2-ounce cans minced clams
- 4 bottles clam juice
- 1/4 cup sherry
- 5 slices bacon, cut up
- 3 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
- 1/2 cup chopped onion
- 1/8 teaspoon black pepper
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- splash Worcestershire sauce
- 2 tbsp chopped parsley
In a large saucepan cook bacon until desired crispness. Add onion and cook about 5 minutes. Add sherry and reduce a bit. Add clam juice, Worcestershire sauce, and pepper. Bring to boil and then reduce heat. Simmer, covered, about 15 minutes or until potatoes are tender.
Stir together heavy cream and flour; add to potato mixture. Cook and stir until slightly thickened and bubbly. Stir in clams and parsley. Return to boiling; reduce heat. Cook for 1 to 2 minutes more or until heated through.
The bread was excellent! A really tender crumb and soft but chewy crust. It would make a great sandwich bread. The possibilities are endless and definitely one to keep in the rotation.
And now... Cannoli Cake is calling me.....
Chicken Pot Pie
Knowing for the past couple of days that the next storm of the century is imminent, I decided to plan. A little.
Disaster Planning is something I've been doing for years. And years. Fireman's son, for one, but then there was Uncle Sam's Yacht Club... how to feed 5000 sailors at General Quarters. Or all those hotels where we had to deal with fires, evacuations, storms, and power loss... How to feed a thousand hotel guests with no electricity. Or all the years in health care. Feeding patients and staff - and the general public - in case of earthquake or other disaster - natural or man-made.
Fortunately, there were only a few times in my career where we actually had to implement a disaster plan - and never for long. I was lucky. But like the Boy Scout I once was, I was always prepared.
The common thread in every plan was having supplies immediately accessible. I couldn't rely on getting a food delivery 24 hours after an earthquake. I needed to have food and supplies on-premise, menus and recipes available, and an action plan to prepare it all based on a hundred different variables; no electricity, no running water, gas but no electricity, water but no gas... you get the picture.
And that's something that's always in the back of my mind. In order for disaster planning to work, it really needs to be second nature. You just do it. We have a propane cooktop, so we can cook even if the electricity goes out. And if the electricity does go out? Uh... It's snowing outside. It's cold. Snow and a couple of ice chests will keep the perishables safe. We're set.
One thing we always have in the house is food. Real food. Ingredients. Flour, sugar, yeast, powdered milk. Coffee. Canned goods. A well-stocked freezer with vacuum-packed everything. (I love our FoodSaver!) Not to mention our legendary Spice Cabinet. For us, the foundation is there. We don't have to run to the grocery store and panic-buy our French Toast fixin's (milk, bread, and eggs). We already have them.
I had a hankerin' for a chicken pot pie tonight but knew it would take too long to make it from scratch after getting home from work today, so I cooked the chicken last night after dinner. Today, all I had to do was make the crust and filling and bake.
I don't really have a recipe for the Pot Pie. It's just something I make. But our friend Ann sent her recipe off to us and it's a pretty close approximation to what I did tonight. I added unpeeled, cubed potatoes and some celery and omitted the bell pepper. The broth was from the chicken I cooked last night, but canned or from a carton would work, too.
The crust is pure simplicity in a food processor.
Pie Dough
- 2 1/2 cups flour
- 1 cup cold butter
- pinch salt
- 1/2 cup cold water
Add flour and salt to bowl of processor. Cut butter into chunks and pulse until crumbly. Add water and pulse about a dozen times.
At this point, the dough is pretty much all crumbs. Gather it up and press it into two disks - one larger for the bottom crust and one smaller for the top.
Roll out on floured board.
And here is Ann's recipe. It's pretty classic.
Nursie’s Pot Pie
Nursie said she originally got this from a pie crust box.
- 1/3 c butter
- 1/3 c flour
- 1 very small chopped onion (or to taste)
- 1/2 c chopped green pepper, leave this out if you want to
- 1 1/2 c broth, chicken for chicken pie, beef for beef pie, and I use veggie broth for pork pie
- 1/3 cup milk
- 2 c frozen mixed veggies
Cook the onion and green pepper in the butter for a bit, whisk in the flour and add the liquids, cook until thickened. I season with salt, pepper, herbes de Provence, but you can use what ever sounds good. A little celery seed isn’t a bad addition, and with beef I use garlic and mushrooms instead of the green pepper. Add 2-3 cups chopped leftover roast whatever and the vegetables. Mix well and dump into the pie crust.
Bake in a two crust pie at 425 for 30-40 minutes and enjoy.
No shit, this is delicious. You can use whatever veggies you have around including leftovers. It is a great end of the week and I don’t want to cook sorta dish. But it is good enough for company! Anyone want to come to dinner?
I made enough for dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow.
I think tomorrow night's snowbound dinner is going to be Clam Chowder in Bread Bowls. Depends on whether I can make a small enough bread bowl.
Bring on the snow.
I'm prepared.
Steaks
The snow has stopped and the driveway is shoveled. (The front walk is going to stay snow-covered until it melts. The Lord giveth, the Lord can taketh away.) If I didn't have to get the car out, eventually, I would leave the driveway, as well.
All that shoveling worked up an appetite. Almost as much as when I'm sitting on my duff in front of the computer.
So after a big bowl of oatmeal this morning, and pizza for lunch, a filet with bearnaise was just the ticket for dinner. And gorgonzola mashed potatoes. And arugula with onions and bacon.
I pan-seared the steaks and then put them into a 425° oven for about 6 minutes. The potatoes were merely regular mashed spuds with some gorgonzola crumbled in.
For the arugula, I diced up a slice of bacon and cooked it with a bit of diced onion. When it was cooked pretty well, I added the arugula and salt and pepper. Nothing else. Very simple and very flavorful.
I have made blender hollandaise for years - it's really quite easy- so I adapted it for a bearnaise. Not exactly the classic recipe, but it works.
Blender Bearnaise
- 2 egg yolks
- 2 tsp heavy cream
- 1/2 cup hot melted butter
- 2 tsp white wine vinegar
- 1/2 tsp tarragon
- pinch chervil
- 1 tsp minced shallot
- pinch salt and pepper
Add egg yolks, heavy cream, shallots, and spices to blender. Mix really well. With blender running, add half the hot butter. Add the vinegar, and then finish adding the remaining butter. Blend until smooth.
That's it. And simple enough for a weeknight meal.
Later tonight we will have dessert - more cake from last night.
This has been a really fun snow-day.
Inexpensive Steaks and a Rich Sauce Béarnaise
It's just amazing how good a cheap round steak can taste with a béarnaise sauce on top! Truly amazing.
Victor wanted to cook dinner last night. It was his distraction from packing for a business trip to Dallas this morning. I never have to be asked twice if someone else wants to cook. I love cooking - but I love eating other people's cooking, too!
He made pan-fried steaks with béarnaise sauce, and oven-roasted potatoes and carrots. Classic simplicity.
He made a slight variation on a classic béarnaise. The classic is egg yolks, butter, white wine vinegar, tarragon, shallots, and chervil. Many (many, many, many) years ago I worked in a restaurant in San Francisco called The Red Chimney. It was a classic 1950's upscale Dinner House with great food. Every night, the owner came into the kitchen to taste the béarnaise. It had to be perfect. It usually was - but there were times when it was thrown out and remade. Sadly, the restaurant was torn down to make way for the Stonestown Galleria. That kind of detail doesn't always exist anymore.
But I digress..
.
Victor's Béarnaise
- 1/2 cup butter
- 2 egg yolks
- 2 tsp white wine vinegar
- 1/2 tsp tarragon
- pinch salt
- pinch pepper
Place half the butter, egg yolks, and vinegar in a double boiler over hot (not boiling) water. Stir constatly until butter is melted.
Add remaining butter and stir until butter is melted and sauce thickens. Add tarragon, S&P. Serve immediately.
It was rich, creamy, and so not on our diets. And we sopped it up with homemade bread.
Since it's just me and the dog for the next three nights, the gastronomical choices are going to be pretty limited. I have found over the years that I really don't enjoy cooking just for myself. I see a few hot dogs in my future.....
Pane Pugliese and Lentilles du Puy
More bread. I just can't think of a better food right now. It's still a bazillion degrees below zero (or so it seems) and the only sensible thing is to stay indoors and heat the kitchen.
I've been making this particular bread for years. It may be one of the easiest, no-brainer-fool-proof breads in the world. And one of the absolute best-tasting.
Today, I really proved the fool-proof part.
Our neighbor across the street just had his gall bladder removed. Since he regularly comes over and plows our driveway when it snows, it is imperative that he regain his good health immediately. I thought fresh-baked bread and a no-fat lentil soup was just the thing to help him on the road to recovery.
This is a basic white-flour recipe. I pulled the biga out of the 'fridge (left over from the Pan Siciliano), got it mixed with the yeast and the water and - exactly 6 cups of flour. I needed 7 1/2. I don't think I've ever run out of flour before, but I have been doing a lot of bread-baking. I did another search to make sure there wasn't a 5 lb bag hiding somewhere. I have whole wheat flour, I have rye flour, I have graham flour, I have self-rising flour. There's even corn flour. No more white flour.
There was absolutely no way I was leaving the house. I added a cup and a half of whole wheat.
The dough came out great. Felt good, it had a great smell to it. Into a ball, into a bowl, and into the "proofing room" it went. (For those not in the know... I just open the heater vents in our powder room and it becomes the warmest and best environment for proofing bread.)
The recipe makes three good-sized loaves and I have generally been able to get them all to fit on one peel. Well... today, they seemed to have a bit more of a mind of their own than usual.
They got big. One was actually hanging off the side a bit.
I already planned to do two loaves in one oven and the third in the other, but as I was sliding the first loaf in, the second fell right off the peel and landed upside down halfway in the oven, laying across the heating element and the door.
Ooops!
I quickly slid the third loaf onto the butcher block and carefully picked up the fallen loaf. I got it into the bottom oven, slid the third one back onto the peel, and got it into the oven.
The loaf in the picture above is the one that fell. It came out pretty awesome. A bit misshapen, but awesome.
THAT is a forgiving loaf of bread.
Pane Pugliese
- 1 packet dry yeast
- 1/4 cup warm water
- 3 cups water; room temp
- 1 cup biga
- 7 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tbsp salt
Proof the yeast in the warm water. Add 1 1/2 c water and the biga, mix till blended. Add flour and salt, mix till dough comes together and pulls off the sides of the bowl. Knead 3-5 minutes in a mixer, longer by hand. Dough will be very soft and elastic. Let rise about 3 hours, shape into 2 small round loaves or 1 big flattish one. If you have baking stones, place loaves on baking peel or on baking sheets sprinkled corn meal. Let rise about 1 hour. Preheat oven to 450°, and 10 minutes before baking flour the loaf tops and dimple them with your fingers. Bake 50-60 minutes for big loaves, 30-35 minutes for small. Tap the loaves to test for doneness (hollow=done) and cool on a rack.
And the biga. I would imagine it could stay in the 'fridge and just keep adding to it as I used to do with my starters years ago.
Biga
- 1/2 tsp active dry yeast
- 1/4 cup warm water
- 1 1/4 cup water (room temperature)
- 3 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
Stir the yeast into the warm water and let stand until creamy – about 10 minutes. Stir in the remaining water and then the flour, one cup at a time.
Mix with the paddle attachment on the mixer at the lowest speed about 2 minutes.
Remove to a slightly oiled bowl, cover, and let rise at cool room temperature for 6 to 24 hours. The starter will triple in volume and still be wet and sticky when ready. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use.
During all of this commotion, I was also making lentil soup. With French lentils. Lentilles du Puy. I'm brave. I'll pair Italian bread with French lentils. Fancy restaurants would charge an arm and a leg and call it fusion.
I call it getting my driveway plowed.
I made two versions of the soup. I added cooked sausage and chicken to ours after taking out half for our neighbor. (I wasn't being cheap. Gall bladder removal = low fat diet. Sausage is definitely not on his diet right now.)
The recipe is for making it all at once. I had a chicken breast in the 'fridge that needed cooking, so I cut it up and added it to the sausage when I cooked it. You can make it vegetarian simply by omitting the sausage/chicken.
Potage de lentille du Puy
- 1 onion, diced
- 6 carrots, chopped
- 6 celery stalks, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 lb French green lentils (or other lentils)
- 10 cups water
- 1 sm can tomato paste
- 2 tsp Herbs d'Provence
- 2 bay leaves
- salt and pepper, to taste
- 1 lb sausage, sliced
Brown sausage, onions, carrots, cekery, and garlic together in soup pot. When cooked reasonably well, add water, lentils, tomato paste and seasonings.
Bring to boil and then simmer uncovered until lentils are tender and soup has thickened slightly.
Check for seasoning and add additional salt and/or pepper, as desired.
We're not expecting any snow showers until next weekend.
Mexican Mac & Cheese
I pulled some chorizo out of the freezer this morning with a vague idea of something spicy for dinner. The only tangible was the sausage. Everything else was open for inspiration.
Did I mention it's about a million degrees below zero? Okay. Not quite, but it was 12° when I left for work this morning. It's the end of January and we've had it pretty easy thus far. But I'm a west coast boy who will never - ever - get used to the cold. I wanted something warm and soothing when I got home. Macaroni and Cheese started calling my name early. I thought I'd get a ham steak and do ham & mac & cheese with peas when the idea of a Mexican Mac & Cheese started formulating...
The more I thought of it, the more I wanted it. Chorizo and tomatoes, jack and cheddar.
A recipe was born...
Mexican Mac & Cheese
- 1/2 lb fresh chorizo
- 1/2 cup onion, diced
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 tsp cumin
- dash cayenne
- 1 can diced tomatoes, drained
- 3 tbsp butter
- 3 tbsp flour
- 3 cups milk
- 2 cups shredded cheeses (cheddar, jack, whatever...)
- tabasco sauce
- worcestershire sauce
- salt and pepper, to taste
- 1/2 pound macaroni
Remove chorizo from casing and brown with onion and garlic. Add spices and cook until very fragrant. Add tomatoes. Heat and set aside.
Melt butter in saucepan. Add flour and stir until smooth. Cook about 3-4 minutes. Add milk and cook until thickened. Add cheese, and a few drops of tabasco and worcestershire sauces. Add salt and pepper, to taste.
Meanwhile, cook macaroni.
When done, mix drained macaroni with chorizo and tomatoes. Add cheese sauce and mix well.
Place all in buttered casserole and top with buttered bread crumbs.
Bake at 350° for about an hour.
It was all the right things... rich, creamy, slightly spicy, crunchy topping. Perfect comfort food for a freezing day.
I can't wait for Spring...
Instant Asian - Sorta
Of all the foods in all the world, Chinese is the one I am least comfortable cooking.
I can get my fingers around a lot of different cuisines, but Chinese has always alluded me. Possibly (or probably) because it's the one type of food I virtually always ate out. I remember my first experience with Chinese Food was in the mid-50s at a restaurant in San Francisco called Kwan's. It was on Geary Blvd around Arguello. My parents would take us there when there were only the three kids. Mike would eat a hamburger, Judy wouldn't eat anything, and I ate anything put in front of me.
Over the ensuing 50+ years, I've really never had to cook Chinese. When I worked at the Hyatt Regency Cambridge, we had The Empress Room where I could gorge on gourmet Chinese offerings. At home, I could pick up the phone and have Andy's Excellent Chow Mein delivered to the door. And now I'm in the Philadelphia suburbs where nothing is convenient and the best Chinese food is just not dim sum from Yank Sing - or Andy's Excellent Chow Mein. I'm spoiled.
So... I attempt a Chinese meal now and again, but let's face it - it just ain't San Francisco. I'm very spoiled.
Enter Frozen Food.
I don't buy a lot of frozen entrees. In fact, I really don't buy any. But I will pick up frozen Asian foods from time to time. I have my standards and I have my exceptions. Love the Assi store in North Wales.
Tonight, a doctored up bag of Chinese Chicken worked. I added sauteed peppers, diced papayas (thawed, with the juice), and lots of Sambal Oelek. It was a spicy and sweet dinner in a mere 20 minutes.
I do have a couple of Chinese cook books - and lord knows I have the spices and sauces necessary to do the job. One of these days I'm just going to have to get serious.
Shake 'n Bake. And I Helped!
We were talking with a friend the other day and she mentioned she was having Shake 'n Bake pork chops for dinner.
It will probably come as no surprise that Shake 'n Bake is not something I would normally have in the cupboard. I love baked and/or breaded things. It just wouldn't cross my mind to buy a pre-made breading mix. It's a bit of the curse of the cook. I often have to remind myself that I don't need to grow the wheat and mill the flour and bake the bread to make a sandwich. A shortcut is using all-purpose flour.
But I digress.
Thing is, the Shake 'n Bake pork chops sounded really good. And since I had pork chops, bread crumbs, and almost every known herb and spice, I figured I could make a reasonable facsimile.
First thing I did was do a web search to see exactly what was in Shake 'n Bake.
Shake 'n Bake's Original Pork flavor includes as ingredients: enriched wheat flour (wheat flour, niacin, iron, thiamin mononitrate Vitamin B1, riboflavin Vitamin B2, folic acid), salt, partially hydrogenated soybean and cottonseed oil, sugar, contains less than 2% of paprika, dextrose, dried onions, spice, caramel color, yeast, annatto (color), and natural flavor.
There's not enough of anything in there to kill ya, but I figured I could do better...
I've probably had Shake 'n Bake at some time, but I don't really recall. It's not something I would have had as a kid - I was out of the house by the time my mom started using "convenience foods" - and since I always worked in a restaurant or kitchen of some sort, it just wasn't something I thought of. I do remember the commercials, though!
So fast-forward to 2010.
I started off with panko bread crumbs because I wanted crunchy, and looking at the pictures online, it looked like there should be a lot of crunch. I added just a tad bit of flour, and then salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and paprika. I have annatto seeds, but I didn't need the coloring - or the caramel coloring. I needed a bit of oil, but didn't want to add oil. Instead, I added a drop of mayonnaise. I flashed back on my mom making a baked cornflake-crusted chicken where the chicken was dipped in mayo and then rolled in crushed corn flakes. It was really good.
Shake 'n Bake instructions say to dip the pork in water or milk and then into the bag with the coating mix. I decided to use mom's mayonnaise coating and then bread the chops. Just a really thin coating, then lots of crumbs. Into the oven at 425° for about 25 minutes.
It worked.
For those Shake 'n Bake purists? Well... I doubt my chops came close to Shake 'n Bake perfection. I've seen the pictures on the internet, and you can easily see the difference in the picture above.
But the chops really did come out good.
Oh... I almost forgot. Side dish...
I steamed artichokes and since I had the mayonnaise out, I mixed some with a teaspoon of chopped capers, 2 cloves of minced garlic, a teaspoon of lemon juice, and a sprinkle of pepper. It made a great sauce for dipping the artichokes.
Pseudo Risotto and Fresh-Baked Bread
I couldn't get dinner on the table fast enough, tonight. And I tell ya - I have found my new favorite bread. It's unbelievable.
The crust is crunchy, crusty, chewy, rich, dark, with a powerful flavor. The crumb is soft, chewy, spongy. And it all hints of sourdough. That yeasty smell of my youth. Seriously, it''s my new favorite bread.
The Pseudo Risotto was a chicken and rice casserole baked in the oven. I actually hadn't thought risotto until plating it up. Pseudo. Definitely not the real thing. But good. Wintertime comfort food - even if it's 60° outside.
I boiled down last nights chicken carcass and pulled off all the meat. I then thickened the broth using the chicken fat from the pot mixed with flour. (I wasn't about to skim off all that flavor just to add fat to thicken it.)
I saved some of the chicken for sandwiches and the rest went into bowl with cooked rice and frozen mixed vegetables. I stirred in the gravy, put it all in a casserole (actually, I split it into two casseroles - one went in the freezer) and into a 350° oven for an hour.
It was very risotto-like. Smooth, creamy, and just the right comfort-food feel.
But the star of tonight's dinner really was the bread.
Yum.
Sunday Chicken Dinner
This meal is Ann's fault. She went on and on about how wonderful a roast chicken is; how many meals one can get from it, how many different meals one can create from it. I had no choice. I had to roast one.
I'm glad I did.
Roasting a chicken really isn't difficult, but I think too many people make it too complicated. If you have a good chicken, you don't need to do a lot. If you don't have a good chicken, no matter what you do won't work.
I started off with a good chicken.
Victor made roasted garlic butter last week and we still have plenty in the fridge. I rubbed a bit under the skin, liberally salted and then added a healthy dose of homemade lemon pepper to the top. Into the pan it went with about a cyup of white wine.
400° for an hour. (Internal temperature of 165°.)
Perfection.
Crisp skin with moist, tender, succulent meat. The garlic butter really came through without overpowering anything.
A simple pan gravy with rice and peas finished off the plate. And there was still plenty of homemade bread to sop up the gravy.
I'm thinking maybe a pot pie tomorrow. Double-crust, of course. Maybe homemade whole wheat bread. It's supposed to be another cold and wet day. The perfect excuse for staying indoors!
Sunday Breakfast
Blueberry pancakes topped with warmed lemon curd.
Is this the way to start a Sunday, or what?!?
I must admit that I rarely ever buy fresh berries (or most fresh produce of any sort) out of season. I love that first strawberry of the season after being without for months, or that raspberry, or blackberry... I gorge myself on them when they're at their peak - and then wait for another year to do it, again.
Of course, nowadays we have tasteless, under-ripe fruits and vegetables being grown all over the world and shipped to our supermarkets so we can enjoy bland foods year-round. I tend to stay away from these things.
Yesterday, however, I tasted some fresh blueberries and visions of blueberry pancakes started dancing in my head. It's amazing how quickly I can toss aside principles when presented with a fresh, juicy blueberry.
This morning, that vision was realised. No pancake-mix pancakes, either. These were the Real McCoy. I resisted making whole wheat oatmeal whole-grain whatevers. My vision was for light, fluffy pancakes studded with juice-popping blueberries.
Blueberry Pancakes
- 2 cups flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 cup sugar
- pinch salt
- 3 eggs
- 1/3 cup neutral oil
- 3/4 cup milk
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 cup blueberries
Mix dry ingredients together. Stir in eggs, oil, milk, and vanilla. A few lumps are okay - they actually help to make the pancakes light. Stir in blueberries and cook on hot griddle.
While my vision of the pancakes, themselves was traditional, my thought for a topping was not. Victor went traditional and chose butter and maple syrup. I chose warmed lemon curd.
A little bit of sunshine in what is supposed to be a wet and rainy day.