Food Friday: Fat Tuesday

Shrove Tuesday, also known as Pancake Tuesday, is the last opportunity to use all the precious eggs and fats before starting on the Lenten fast. Pancakes are a perfect way to use up these ingredients. Choose your pancake wisely, as it’s 40 long days until Easter.

Are you all fattened up for Mardi Gras? Lent starts on Wednesday, you know. You’ve only got a few more days to parade around, strewing beads and misbehaving, and eating whatever your little heart desires. We are going to make stacks, and towers, and cascades of teetering, delicious pancakes ourselves.

Luckily it is almost time for the weekend! And weekends mean real breakfasts. Eggs, bacon, pancakes…Traditionally, eggs and fats were forbidden during Lent. On Shrove Tuesday, the day before Lent starts, pancakes were rustled up to make good use of any of the tempting sinful ingredients that were cluttering up the larder. Pancakes are the last indulgence before the forty days of slim pickings during Lent. We don’t often eschew pancakes. We tend to err on the side of pleasure – ascetics are not us. Tuesday is our last chance before we clean up our acts, and get pious. Or to at least step on the scale and realize Carnival has been rocking out just long enough. So in the scant time before Lent, let the pancake flipping begin!

Pancakes are weekend food. We tend to be grouchy crunchy cereal people during the week, barely looking up from our devices to make civilized chatter. Peeling a banana is about as fancy as we get in food prep on a workday morning.

Weekends are different. And glorious. It seems as if there is an abundance of leisure time; when it is pleasurable and we feel un-rushed, and we can actually talk and laugh and plan how many trips to the hardware store we think we are going to need to make. And will we be able to pencil in a nap? Or a movie? The endless possibilities that present themselves at the beginning of a weekend!

We have noticed that the meals over which the most time is devoted are the meals that get eaten in the shortest amount of time imaginable. Thanksgiving takes at least a day to prepare, and the meal’s temporal length is about 20 minutes. Pancakes disappear in a snap as they are transported from the griddle to the plate. A nanosecond is spent pouring the maple syrup and cutting a little square of salty butter. Then the pancakes vaporize almost as quickly as the dog’s kibble is scarfed up. Ten minutes to mix, 20 minutes to let the batter rest, 20 minutes to cook, equals about 3 minutes to devour.

There is a nice rhythm and tempo preparing the pancakes, though. (Assuming you square away the bacon before you start pouring pancake batter.) Measuring and stirring, testing the griddle with a drop of water, tasting the bacon, wasting the first batch, pouring out the second, third and fourth servings, watching the pancakes bubble, dropping one for the dog, flipping pancakes one-handed with Merrie Melody aplomb. Whoops. Another pancake for the dog.

Buttermilk Pancakes
3 eggs, separated
1 2/3 cups buttermilk
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tablespoon sugar
3 tablespoons butter, melted
Beat the yolks until pale and smooth.
Beat in the buttermilk and then the baking soda and mix well.
Sift in the dry ingredients mixing as you add; make sure the batter is smooth.
Add in the melted butter and mix well.
Beat the egg whites in another bowl until stiff.

Fold into the batter until no white bits are visible.
Let batter stand about 20 minutes before pouring out pancakes.
Make sure your griddle is really hot – do the water test.
Ladle batter onto griddle; turn when bubbles form across the cakes and allow to lightly brown on the second side.
Serve with lots warm maple syrup and sweet salty butter and lots of bacon. And tall glasses of cold milk. Yumsters!

Impressive vacation-worthy pancakes from our friends at Food52

Martha suggests trying the crowd-pleasing buttermilk pancake. I love the touch of lemon juice: Martha’s Pancakes

As this is the last week of Black History Month, it is fitting that we flip some of Rosa Parks’s Featherlite Pancakes. Dan Pashman, of the Sporkful, interviewed Rosa Parks’ nieces: Rosa Parks’s Pancakes

Rosa Parks’s Featherlite Pancakes
Sift together
1 cup flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar

Mix
1 egg
1 1/4 cup milk
1/3 cup peanut butter
1 tablespoon melted shortening or oil
Combine with dry ingredients, cook at 275° on griddle

“Everything can have drama if it’s done right. Even a pancake.”

-Julia Child