While thinking about visits to the Netherlands and eating just a few things come to my mind like eating Loempias on the market of Enschede, Kibbeling on a different market somewhere else (can’t remember the place now) and then there are Pannekoeks. Just now I realise how many Dutch words we used back then in my childhood or how similar the daily spoken language was with Dutch. Or maybe it was all because my grandmother was Dutch. I don’t know. Anyway, as it’s time to contribute to my very own challenge Bloggers Around the World: The Netherlands, I reckon I have to do as previously announced and have Pannekoeks or pancakes. We once (at least) visited a Pannekoek house in the Netherlands to have some food. You could have all sorts of pancakes, sweet or savoury, as you wished.
Then there is also a place in Germany, in Bremen, a Pannekoek restaurant on a sailing ship on the water, not far from the city centre. The place is called Admiral Nelson. Anyway, we would have had pancakes … if it would not be closed on Mondays ...
Now there you could have all kinds of pancakes as you already see. They had also for example a Mexican style and an Indian style pancake on offer.
But we want to have our own. First of all, you go for your basic pancake batter:
One cup on flour, one cup of milk, an egg and a pinch of salt. If you want more batter, just multiply the amounts.
At the time I was having pannekoeks I was limited to what kind of ingredients I had at home. Here I used chorizo and cheese.
I just gave some batter into the hot and oiled pan. After a while I added the chorizo, cheese and a bit of dried oregano. You could put a lid on, if you like or later put the pancake quickly under the grill to get the cheese a bit more melting.
Well, all this was not much, but just imagine the possibilities, you could have a pancake topped in the same way you could top a pizza. So, go for a mushrooms or tuna version.
Fine, I just added the obligatory chilli sauce, just because I wanted to. No worries.
Or simply do a triple or quadruple or even quintuple cheese one. Use your imagination, this is the only limit you have here.
If you wish you could also put some kind of salad on top. Just now I am thinking about it, how good it would have been to put Parma ham and rocket leaves on it.
Then there is also always the option to go the sweet way, if you want to. I don’t want to today.
There comes a time in the life of a man, where he has to go nuts … Wait! That is nuts!
Let’s start again! Sometimes a man has to do what a man has to do, even if it is nuts … Hm, that sounds nuts, too.
Under certain circumstances things might just go nuts … argh … forget it. It’s all nuts anyway.
What I really wanted to say is: It’s time to prepare some nice sweet food and while doing that use some nuts, because I want it that way … and … read right to the end to find out.
Some time ago I read about a cake with pancakes and just kept the information in mind. You never know when things might come in handy. Well, today was that day. I was in the mood for a cake, but not really for the process of proper baking. On top of that, I still didn’t go shopping and was once again left with what was … eh … left at home in the storage.
This now leads to our ChoPeaPan-Cake.
Let me say just one more thing before I start.
Or well, put in a little story again. You might know the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indy has recovered the Ark and lost it. Now he is free again and the Germans want to get the Ark away with a truck. Here goes the dialogue between Indy and Sallah. Indy: “Meet me at Omar’s. be ready for me. I’m going after that truck.” Sallah: “How?” Indy: “I don’t know, I’m making this up as I go.”
In that spirit I like to go on here, making it up as I go. This is more or less a live post. It is the first time I try this cake. It might or might not be nice. We will see later. If not, this recipe might be usable with some adjustments. I try to include suggestions if necessary.
What you might need:
One 250 ml cup of spelt flour
The same cup filled with milk
One whatever sized free range (if desired organic) well, eh … egg
A pinch of salt
One tablespoon of cocoa powder
100 g of dark chocolate
100 g of butter
2 tablespoons of vanilla sugar
50 g or so salted or unsalted peanut butter (as you wish)
As many peanuts as it takes
Oil for frying
How you might do it:
Make a pancake batter using the flour, the milk, the egg, a pinch of salt, the cocoa powder and one tablespoon of vanilla sugar. Beat it all like nuts.
Meanwhile heat a drop of oil in a small pan. If you want a bigger cake, you might have to double the amounts and use a bigger pan respectively.
Before you begin frying your cocoa pancakes in the pan, start to melt the chocolate together with the butter in a bowl above boiling water. Have it going? Good!
Now go for the pancakes. You should get four.
What I did then is, I finished one pancake, put it on a plate and started a new pancake. While that was happening, I spread some peanut butter on the ready pancake and scattered some peanuts on it.
Then the next pancake, peanut butter, peanuts, pancake, peanut butter, peanuts and finishing off with the last pancake.
When the chocolate has melted and looks shiny and silky, you can add the vanilla sugar and let the mass cool down a bit before you pour it over the layered pancakes.
Since sufficient(?) time has passed, we can pour the chocolate over the pancakes and … end up with a cake swimming in a pool of chocolate (sorry, the photo with the swimming cake didn't work out - don't know, why I had just one shot).
So … off to the fridge with the cake and with me to the computer to write this (right here it becomes more live).
…
It has been one hour now. I go and have a look.
…
Not so bad, the chocolate solidified. That gives me the opportunity to transfer the cake to a fresh plate and start with scraping off and eating the chocolate sticking to the old plate. Yum yum – chocolaty and tasty! So our little experiment might have a happy ending.
The ChoPeaPan-Cake could use some decoration. We still have some peanuts left we can place on top, doing it carefully.
I got on all peanuts safely, apart from one. Maybe you can spot it on the photo … or maybe not.
In the end there is only one thing left to do: the taste check. After spending quite a little bit of time on that cake I can reward me with the final result. Or is it not a reward? Let’s see … or better say taste.
…
It took me some time to cut out a piece of cake for me and to take some final photos.
Now the final verdict:
I’m not quite so sure about the salty peanut butter. It tasted fine, but since I did use this one and not the other one I cannot judge what tastes better … hm … but I think it has it’s place. All in all it was not so sweet. You might want to experiment a bit with the amounts of sugar or the kind of chocolate you use – maybe a better quality chocolate would be useful here or even one with flavour – I would suggest a Milka chocolate with Daim pieces in it. I could imagine doing it that way and tweak the amount of sugar for the pancake batter might change a tasty treat into a divine one.
This is the point where you have to either trust my judgement or you have to do it as Indy says in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: “There is only one way to find out.” Then he took the holy grail with water and had a drink from it.
Ah … that was quite and adventure Indy had there.
And a nutty adventure we had here as well indeed (even without a bullwhip, Fedora hat and leather jacket).
Around this time it should be the season for the lavender to turn Provence purple. So far I didn't have the chance to witness it myself. I was around at the wrong time of the year. Nevertheless it's very pretty around Provence. Mainly we did hiking and exploring villages and ruins.
Nature is always working at winning territory back. Somewhere around the neighbourhood here I saw even a house with a car next to it, where plants started to crawl up on the car (obviously not used recently). However before looking around at the above shown ruin, there was a warning sign: "Dangereux ..." something. Rocks could fall on your head and snakes could bite you. None of these happened, though. Luckily! Although, my friend, I sometimes call him "Nougat" (you might know him already from one of my older posts: Chocolate Marzipan Cake), somehow attracts danger and things happen to him. But not this time.
I also very much like those villages resting gently at the slopes of the hill. Whatsoever, I have no photo with lavender for you - at least not from France. The one in my garden, doesn't look to good either.
The lavender of the neighbours looks much much better at the moment. However, I am glad that it survived winter (-15°C), although it didn't look like that. I would never dare to give up on my plants. It's over when it's over! Back to lavender! To a large extent, lavender in Provence is used to make perfume and soap. Apart from that, lavender is also part of the well known herbs of the Provence, together with hyssop, oregano, basil, rosemary, sage, fennel, thyme, and savory. There are many more ways to use lavender. According to my herbs encyclopaedia, it can calm you down or help against cramps when you use it in your bath. Furthermore it helps against nervousness, stomach problems, sleeping problems, headache, stress symptoms, moths (doesn't quite fit at this point, but ... whatever), and when you have problems concentrating. For that (concentrating) briefly cook one tablespoon of lavender buds with half a litre wine and let cool down. Have a small glass of it before and after your meal. I said a small one. It's medicine, not for getting you drunk. Well, then, you can use lavender buds also directly for cooking. That is what I wanted to do today for breakfast. The Internet planted the idea in my brain some days ago. So when I fell out of bed this morning, my first thought was: LAVENDER! Fine! Let's do some Lavender and Honey Pancakes.
I don't want to give you a list of ingredients, but we do it again as we go, because it is quite simple. Have a small bowl ready (this will do for 1-2 persons). Crack one egg to it and add a pinch of salt. Fill a mug (or large cup) with flour and try to remember how much you took after you added it to your bowl. Use the same cup and fill it to the same level with milk. Give the milk a splash of lemon juice (a good thing to do when you have no buttermilk in the house). Add a half to a whole teaspoon of dried lavender buds (depending on taste) to your bowl, but beware, the taste can get quite strong. So if you are not sure, take less. You can add more later or next time. After you had the milk working a bit, pour it into the bowl (including those bits that started to form). Now to complete the batter use 2-4 teaspoons of runny honey. Whisk things through well. Then you can bake your pancakes with a drop of oil at high heat in your pan. When things dry nearly completely up at the top, you can turn your pancake. For the other side you have to guess when it's ready, but it will not be too long.
Serve it with some yogurt and extra honey and lavender buds. If you are greedy, you will eat them all alone. After all, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. At least this is what some say. However, that would be a different subject. Enjoy your Lavender and Honey pancakes and maybe one day you will have the chance to see the lavender flowering in Provence.
Some days ago I found my old notebook - the kind with paper, where you need a pen to make entries. In this very book, the last entry was from August 1995. Some things (I'm not going to reveal the whole content of that book) written in it were recipes I liked back then and wanted to keep. One of this was a Japanese recipe: お好み焼き (o-konomi yaki). This is a savoury pancake with cabbage. The name is derived from a Japanese word meaning "what you like". So, whatever you like goes on it (although there are certain things I would never dare to recommend).
Here we are then, about to cook something Japanese. To get myself in the mood I put a CD on with some Japanese music.
That was all I had: A CD from Vivian Hsu.
Together with the pancake I want to prepare a miso soup.
A bit of cutting to start with. Then ... OK ... here is the pancake recipe ...
O-konomi yaki
Ingredients: 100 g flour 1 egg (preferably from a happy chicken - at least until someone stole her egg) 1 handful of cut cabbage 50 g prawns 1 spring onion (cut lengthwise) 1 clove of garlic (peeled) 1 thumb sized piece of ginger Salt 1 stock cube (chicken, vegetable, or whatever) water vegetable oil for frying seaweed, Worcestershire sauce (optional)
Method: First of all mix the flour, a pinch of salt, the (happy) egg and a bit of water to a "gooey" batter. Heat up the oil in a medium sized pan. Then add the cabbage and incorporate well. If the batter is too gooey, just add a bit more water to get the desired texture. When the oil is hot enough you can add half of the batter to the pan and tilt the pan so that the batter covers the bottom of the pan. Get your prawns, spring onion, garlic, and ginger ready. Put the prawns and the spring onion on the already frying batter. Then grate the garlic and ginger on top, but don't grate too vigorously ... or otherwise you grate your fingers as well. Cover it all up with the remaining batter and fry nicely and golden from both sides.
Once the pancake is done, you can serve it with seaweed (Reminds me of a stupid joke: Why did the lobster blush? Because the sea weed.) and Worcestershire sauce.
Then "dig in"! Maybe together with a miso soup. Well, how can you it this with chopsticks? Try, and find out ... To finish this whole meal of, a small cup of green tea.
But don't add milk to the tea. At least that is what it said on the package. I hope you like o-konomi yaki ... I do. Instead of using prawns - as I already mentioned at the outset - you can use many different other things, like beef, pork or go for a vegetarian version with some nice vegetables like carrots or use cheese or ... what you like (However, I don't take any responsibility if it isn't edible anymore!).
Some day I will try a traditional Japanese breakfast ...
