smitten kitchen

It wouldn’t be Hanukah if I didn’t refresh my favorite, dead-simple potato pancake recipe. But it wouldn’t make for a very interesting story if I told the same one every year; in fact, I think they get better with each try because I continue to tweak them ever so much.

This year, after finally making peace with my cast frying pan (coincidentally, over an “apple latke”) I cooked them in there, and will use no other pan for them as long as I live. It is a browning genius, and even small amounts of oil resulted in no sticking whatsoever. I also realized that I found them a bit on the salty side — something I noted last year and entirely forgot in the 12 months since — I hope to remember that next year.

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Am I glad I spilled out my frying pan angst to you all yesterday or what? This morning (and by “morning” I think we all understand that it was 1 p.m., right?), when faced with the task of an apple pancake recipe I’ve been wanting to make for eons, the thought using that stainless steel pan was enough to make me skip it.

But since two hundred and thirty two of you (approximating, you see) suggested I get back in with cast iron, I decided to give it another shot. I’ve had a big (and omg, so heavy!) 12-inch cast iron pan for years. It was a whopping $18 and I hear, supposed to be the best investment I’ve ever made. But despite my repeated no-soap, re-reseasoning and tomato-avoiding efforts, the seasoning had never gotten to that “nonstick-like” place. Or so I thought! This morning, I heaved that thing up onto the stove for the pancakes, warned Alex that this might be “bagel run” kind of morning in the end, after all, and got to frying those babies up.

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I bet I am not alone in this, but one of my favorite things is to find some odd ingredient in the fridge and try to figure out what I can make that will use it up that does not include, say, buying another ingredient that I will only half-use to do so.

(This reminds me of when of the time we discovered that we had been joined by a roommate of the tiny, scampering variety, an evil one that outsmarted all traps put in its path, and many suggested that we get a cat to “get rid of it”. But then how to get rid of the cat problem, I always asked, and people shook their heads and clucked their tongues at me. Okay, perhaps this story isn’t an exact parallel after all…)

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In the Great Deposit of Food Phobias post, a few of you said that you were afraid of making pancakes and my instant un-asked-for retort is that you all clearly didn’t grow up in my house, where I am pretty sure that knowing when to flip a pancake was one of the first cooking tricks I ever learned.

Mom made pancakes at least a couple weekends a month, and was loyal to the Joy of Cooking recipe, a page so batter-stained and grimy, I am pretty sure the book falls open to it even when the red ribbon isn’t at that page, which is never. And though I promise not to judge you, please, whatever you do, don’t say that Schmisquick word to my mother. It upsets her. I still remember sleeping over my friend’s house and coming over and saying that her mom made pancakes for breakfast, and that they were okay.

“Pfft,” my mother said. “She uses [that word that rhymes with Schmisquick].”

Mom was ruthless, and apparently I wasn’t much better. In college, my friends and I took to driving out to the 24-hour IHOP in Arlington whenever it struck our fancy, but I never ordered pancakes. At IHOP. Because they tasted like they were from a mix. And my mother, rather than discouraging the “Pancake Snob” label my friends were giving me, beamed with pride.

But that’s enough about all the ways my mother poisoned me against anything but homemade things. I’d much rather take you on a tour of how easy pancakes can be.

10 Pancake Tips
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You know how you know it’s November? I actually made breakfast this morning. I’m sorry if that shattered your pristine image of me. Sure, I occasionally cook big, elaborate brunches for friends or family and I even spoil myself from time to time with yogurt with pumpkin butter and pepita granola, but pretty consistently, Saturday and Sunday morning I chew on my fingernails until Alex wakes up, or sometimes, if I’m really hungry and he’s still sleeping (the boy is a sleep MACHINE) I’ll sit next to him on the bed and stare until he wakes up and brings us either bagels from Murray’s or eggs from the diner. Yes, you heard that right. I get a fried egg and toast take out. Yes, I am ashamed to know myself sometimes, too.

Nonetheless, as it appears that despite my caveats this NaBloPoMo thing is on, I figure that if nothing else I can use it to clean out the refrigerator. Have you ever bought something but forgotten to eat it then found six weeks later that it was in the very back of the refrigerator, still in perfect condition? Did it make you feel wildly uncomfortable about the preservatives that must be in your food? Did you get over it and eat it anyway? Well, I did. I found some little green apples in the produce drawer this morning that Alex, despite loving green apples, had been staunchly avoiding because they had actually ripened (true story: the boy doesn’t like ripe fruit), and then there was some leftover ricotta from a dish we’ll get to next week and a lemon that really had better days, but wouldn’t my grandmothers be proud that I hadn’t wasted food?

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