Flat food p1

Last Sunday was fathers day, and my boys suggested, as a fathers day treat, that I make them pancakes.

Actually, the request was more specific. The word was crepes.

Flat breads of various kinds are incredibly useful bachelor foods for breakfasts, snacks, work and school bags.

And for dinner? How about corn enchiladas with cummin-lime pork? More on that in Flat things pt 2.

Crepe or pancake. Basically the difference is a pancake includes a raising agent and a crepe doesn’t.

Crepes are more likely to be eaten folded or rolled, while pancakes are more likely to be eaten with syrup or salsa.

Smaller pancakes (flapjacks) can be eaten in a stack.

If you add extra caster sugar (and some vanilla essence) as well as a raising agent and make smaller cakes, you get pikelettes, which seem to be an Australian / New Zealand invention.

Wikipedia has a really good discription of pancake styles around the world at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancake

Crepe recipe

Ingredients

• 1 cup plain flour
• 1.25 cups milk
• .5 teaspoon caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon butter

Yields 6–8 crepes

Method

The most important thing is not about making the crepes, but keeping them warm. Put the oven onto 60 degrees now, and pop in a dinner plate.

Mix all ingredients except the butter in a mixing bowl using a whisk. The mixture needs to be smooth. When you lift your whisk out of the mixture, it needs to run, rather than fall in blobs (not too thick), but leave ripples where it falls back in the bowl that stay for a moment or two (not too thin).

Heat half the butter in a frying pan. The heat needs to be high enough for the butter to melt and start to bubble, but not so high for the butter to burn.

When the butter is melted and coving the pan evenly, add the batter, just enough to almost fill the pan. I like to leave about a cm of space on the outside to the edge of the pan because I think the slightly smaller size looks better on the plate, and that bit of extra space makes turning the crepe a little easier.

When the edges of the crepe start to turn up, and small air bubbles start to pop in the mixture, it is time to turn them. Add extra butter as required.

Remove them one by one to the warming plate.

Serving

My boys and I like sprinkling with raw sugar and lemon juice and rolling them up. Yum!

A side benefit to crepes is that it is one of the few ways my kids will eat eggs without the slightest hassle.