Pancake Travels

Today's pancake travels take us to The Dominican Republic, which like Dominica, is in the Caribbean.  However, unlike Dominica, The Dominican Republic is one of two countries on the island it exists on.  Roughly half of the island belongs to the Dominican Republic, and the other half belongs to Haiti. We quickly learned that in the Dominican Republic they eat a type of pancake called arepitas de maiz, or in English, little corn arepas.  These were very quick and easy to make, and they required very few ingredients.  For once, we had all of the ingredients in our cabinet and didn't have to go out searching for any special ones.  Woohoo! Now without further ado, here's what you'll need to make arepitas de maiz: 1 cup of cornmeal 1/4 cup of milk 1 1/2 teaspoons of sugar 3/4 teaspoons of salt 1 teaspoon of aniseed 2 large eggs oil for frying In a bowl, beat your eggs with a whisk. O.K., the white spot in the eggs is not a shell, just an odd reflection of the light....

We have finally made it to the African country of Djibouti, where they call their pancakes laxoox.  At first glance, the recipe for laxoox looks more bread like than pancake like.  This is because it calls for yeast.  However, it doesn't require kneading, and once you  mix all of the ingredients together, it is definitely a batter and not a dough.  Last, you fry it.  So once again, it meats all of our criteria for a pancake. Upon first looking at this recipe it reminded me of Algerian pancakes because it requires yeast in the batter, and you only cook it on one side.  I recalled not being overly fond of the Algerian pancakes, so I was a little concerned about how the Djiboutian pancakes would turn out.  I was hoping Djiboutian pancakes would taste better since they used a different type of flour.  So, with an optimistic outlook, we set out to make laxoox, and here is what we used to make them: 2 cups all-purpose flour 1/4 cup wheat flour 1/4 ...

So, I said in my last post that we would be moving on to Djibouti; however, I just remembered that we went to Dominica first, as we were waiting for some important ingredients to arrive for Djiboutian pancakes. In our researcher, we soon learned that Dominica is not the same as the Dominican Republic.  Dominica.  Dominica is a small island in the Caribbean, and we soon discovered that there version of a pancake is something they call cassava bread.  This was not bread in any sense of the word bread.  There was no yeast in it, no kneading was necessary, and it was definitely from a batter.  Also, it involved lightly frying the batter.  Thus, it met all of our requirements for being a pancake.  Since it meets our pancake criteria, here we go with what you'll need to make Dominican cassava bread: 1 cup fresh cassava meal 2 tablespoons all purpose flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 1 tablespoon sugar 1 tablespoon vegetable oil 1/3 cup milk 1 tablespoon lime ju...

So, here we are, once again behind on pancake blogging.  This is a short blog to fill you all in on what's been keeping us from our pancake travels.  We last ended in Denmark, where we had yummy Danish aebleskivers.  From there, we were on our way to Djibouti; however, it took us a long time to get there.  We meant to get there towards the end of July, but we were unable to make our final destination due to not being able to find berbere spice mix or sauce.  Also, we were trying to do all of our last minute stuff before going on our real travels in August. Now, on to August.  The month of August found us in Ecuador for the majority of the month.  While here, we did have pancakes one time, in the town of Mindo.  However, these weren't what one would call traditional Ecuadorian pancakes.  They were more like American pancakes. However, we had a lovely chocolate sauce, as well as a ginger sauce with them.  In addition we had some home made...