Food journal number 30: Pannkakor

Finally, I have a little bit of "down time" at home before things start rolling again in school. This means that I finally had time to put the mountain of clothes in the wash, and while I'm waiting for them, I think I might as well blog (like I need to find an excuse!). Anyway, I think a food blog is in order.

Last week wasn't a cooking week at all. As Marcus was down with tonsillitis and could only eat a variety of semi-liquid food, I had to run to the grocery to buy fruit soups, vegetable soups, rice porridge, mashed potatoes and other mushy stuff that probably made the cashier think that I was on the soup diet ("No, it's my boyfriend who's on a soup diet," I could have told him). Since there was no point in preparing meals for one, I then succumbed to "dorm food" (read: ham sandwiches) and some frozen leftovers (Moroccan stew we cooked two weeks ago) while I was working. In fact, the only thing I cooked the whole week were pancakes (pannkakor, singuar: pankaka). And since Swedish pancakes are actually more like crepes, it was something both Marcus and I could eat at the same time.

I made those! :-) Marcus used to be the pancake expert, and while it took some time for me to figure out how to make them thin but easy to flip, I finally got it.

We got the basic recipe from the internet, but we discovered that adding an extra egg made them easier to flip. Besides, we'd like to think they're more filling that way.

You need:
2.5 deciliters (1 cup) flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 deciliters (2.5 cups) milk
4 eggs (the original recipe only had 3)
50 grams (about 1/4 cup) butter

Take a big pan and pre-heat it on the stove on medium heat. Mix the flour and salt in a big mixing bowl, add half of the milk and mix it all together into a homogenous batter. When the batter is smooth, whisk the the rest of the milk and all the eggs into it (I use an immersion blender, but you don't have to if you have a whisk). Melt the butter in the microwave and whisk that into the batter as well (the "batter" will look more like soup, but don't worry). Let the mixture stand for about 5 minutes more while waiting for the pan to become really hot. Then pour about half a cup of pancake mix at a time unto the pan, and turn it when the edges become golden brown. According to internet recipes, the pan doesn't need more oil or butter because of the addition of butter into the recipe. Still, I always put a small spot of butter when I'm cooking mine, perhaps out of habit. The recipe makes about 10-15 pancakes.

I always turn my pancakes with a turner, but if you feel inspired, you can also do it Marcus-style (Show-off! Haha! :-) ).

The thing about these Swedish pancakes are, funnily, they can be both main course and dessert. I've been to other places where we had pancakes with bacon, turkish yogurt, onions and even fish roe. Traditionally, pancakes were also eaten as a side-dish to chickpea soup every Thursday (which is why chickpea soup is also called "Thursday soup"). As dessert, breakfast or snack, the traditional stuff to fold in the pancakes are blueberry jam, sugar or honey, and cream. (I prefer the sweet variant. Yumyum). I guess it doesn't really matter what you put in it as long as it works, but as anyone who's eaten pancakes for breakfast know, they're deceivingly filling even on their own!

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