National Pancake Day was yesterday. As usual, I’m a day late and a dollar short. Nevermind that I had a pecan waffle with extra pecans sans syrup at the Waffle House this morning.
Still and all, I offer you this, my homage to maple syrup (and to pancakes though indirectly.)
As a child, I did not like pancake syrup though I loved the shape of the Aunt Jemima glass bottle. Everyone thought I was weird, but I much preferred my pancakes and French toast with tons of butter. Dripping with butter. Drowning in it. Floating.
Some time during my misspent early adulthood, I did not mark the day in my calendar of things to remember, I was unceremoniously given pancakes with syrup already applied. Not wanting to be one of those people, I unenthusiastically loaded a forkful and put it in my mouth.
Oh my. All the pleasure pheromones and chemicals and other assorted signals lit up like a Christmas tree at the North Pole and I smiled big and broad.
Real maple syrup tapped from trees is one of God’s gifts
Pancakes or waffles, you ask? Well. I’m actually a French toast kind of chick if I’m going to be that carb indulgent. Normally, my breakfast of choice is potatoes, sausage, two eggs over easy, wheat toast well done and well buttered. That’s my mainstay.
But there are mornings—or evenings more likely—when a warm breakfast bread calls to me.
I once had a vintage waffle iron I bought at the Goodwill for $2. I was excited to have it. I brought it home, plugged it in to see if it worked and told my five-year-old son not to touch it. What did he do? He touched it. Nearly 2nd degree burns on his little hand. I learned real fast why it was at the Goodwill. It was not safe. The whole thing got hot. Scorching hot. 2nd degree burns hot. I did the world a favor and threw that sucker away.
I did eventually get a new waffle iron. Hated it too. By the time you got the waffles from the iron to the table, the butter wouldn’t melt, they were so cold. And that is mostly my experience with waffles. You can’t keep them hot. And there is no point in a waffle or a pancake or even French Toast if it’s not hot and swimming in melted butter. Lots of butter. Real butter. Good real butter. Like a nice Danish butter from the Gucci Kroger cheese case.
So, we went back to pancakes. I like pancakes. Tons of butter and sometimes, certainly not always, a bit of maple syrup. Real maple syrup. Not that fake stuff. Ooooo ick. No. Never that. Never. But I seldom order them and even less often make them at home. Just not big on the pancakes.
But the French toast, you might ask? Well. There’s a problem with French toast. I like it one of two ways. Made with that dirt cheap white bread you can buy at any Dollar General or French toast, Pan Perdue, made with my homemade bread. The problem is I seldom have either when a French toast urge comes upon me. So, it’s a once or twice a year thing unless I’m out somewhere, but they rather bug me the French toast purveyors do. By the time they’re done with it, it’s a dessert. Powdered sugar, fruit compote, whipped cream. Now that can be good, as a dessert, but it’s not French toast.
Here’s the recipe for French Toast:
Connie’s day old homemade white bread sliced about an inch and half thick.
6 eggs, beaten
Heavy cream
A dash of nutmeg
Salt and pepper
Good butter
Mix all the ingredients except the butter until you have a creamy thick liquid. Soak the bread in it and pop the slices into a hot pan with melted butter. Fry on both sides until puffed and golden brown.
Serve with copious amounts of butter and maple syrup if you must. Savory sausage patties for contrast on the side. Perfection.
But waffles or pancakes, you ask? I hang out at the Waffle House. In fact, I have a book started: Meet Me at the Waffle House. I have a couple of chapters written. One morning, I wanted something different and noticed they offered waffles with pecans. I have never turned down a pecan in my life. Waffle House waffles with extra pecans and a load of whipped butter are the bomb. Love ‘em. I think it’s the pecans, but they hold the heat. I can actually get a hot waffle. Oooo doggies. Good eating.
Yesterday, I took my Consort to the Waffle House. He decided on a waffle along with eggs etc. I told him to get it with extra pecans. He’ll tell you. Perfection.
So, the answer? Waffles or pancakes? Waffle House waffles (hot) with extra pecans at 5 a.m. with your hot lover and hot coffee. Oooo doggies.
I’m sure many chefs get asked the question all the time of how they found their way into the kitchen. There are a few of the usual stories that get shared but it’s not always the cookie-cutter story of helping mom or grandma.
For me, it’s half typical and half not. At a pretty young age, I was helping my mom make bread- I think I was six years old. It was the Betty Crocker Cookbook and I recall using a standard white bread. A side story is that this bread got an unlikely nickname as “the bread with the hole in the top.” To explain, my mom was apparently in a hurry one time she made it and didn’t form the dough firmly enough when placing it into the loaf pan, leaving a pocket of air where the dough was folded. This resulted in a hole in each slice of bread, and thus the name. Despite its technical shortfall, it was very tasty bread. In addition to that recipe, we also made a recipe from the book for a potato dough called “Refrigerator Roll Dough.” I still use this recipe from time to time, as I find it very easy to work with and it’s very forgiving with its overnight proof in the refrigerator. After a couple of years of helping her, by the time I was nine or ten, I made the bread myself for Thanksgiving. The following year, I was probably too ambitious for my own good and failed at attempting to make croissants. There were tears and some butter angrily thrown into the trash can when I couldn’t get it to cooperate, but making bread with Mom is otherwise one of my fonder childhood memories. I also helped Mom with making pies, which were sometimes simple with store-bought pie shells, but not always- Mom got pretty serious about pie sometimes. She also made a yearly batch of what she referred to as “killer chili,” which is based around a more traditional “Chile con Carne” and not this ground beef and beans nonsense that gets sold in a can. Mom made chili that took a couple of days and $100, and that’s when $100 was actually worth something.
W. Va. Fur and Root 