Pancake Travels

I'll start this post off by saying I forgot to mention in my last post on Estonia why I skipped Eritrea and moved on to Estonia.  The reason for this was because I couldn't find teff flour anywhere locally.  Also, because the Eritrean pancake batter takes 3 days to ferment, and I just didn't have the time to do this, I decided to move on to Estonia temporarily. However, this weekend I not only had my teff flour in hand, but I also had the 3 days it takes to make these pancakes.  So I'm now off to Eritrea and Ethiopia.  I've decided to consider these pancakes both Eritrean and Ethiopian for many reasons.  Here they are: Eritrea and Ethiopia both make a bready pancake called injera. Both of their injera recipes call for teff flour Everytime I looked up the recipe I used for the lentil stew to go with it, some of the recipes that would show up were listed as Eritrean, and some of them were listed as Ethiopian. Both countries use a sour teff batter to make their res...

As we continue to slowly make our way through the Es, we now find ourselves in Estonia.  Here we learned that they call their pancakes Come Again Tomorrow.  Apparently this is because they are so good that whoever eats them will want to come again tomorrow to eat them again.  With this in mind, we surely hope it's true, and we begin making tule homme jälle.  These are a stuffed savory pancake, so you'll need to make sure to make the filling for these before you make the actual pancakes.  To make these you will need the following: Filling: 1 tablespoon oil 1 medium onion, chopped 1 pound of minced meat (we used veggie ground soy) 1/2 cup of stock (use beef stock if you're using ground beef, chicken for ground chicken, or vegetable stock if you're going the veggie route.  We used vegetable stock) 2 tablespoons of fresh parsley, chopped salt and black pepper to taste Pancakes: 3 eggs a little less than 1/2 cup of flour 10 ounces of milk pinch of salt Topping: ...

O.K., so in my head, I sang the title of this post to the tune of Oh Christmas Tree.  Try it, it works! Unlike last year, we didn't attempt to make latkes every night of Chanukah; however, we have made them three nights out of four. We made traditional latkes for the first night.  We don't have any pictures of them, but here's the recipe we used if you'd like to make them: Ingredients ·          4 medium Potatoes, peeled ·          1/2 lrg Sweet Onion, diced into 1/4 ″ pieces ·          3 cloves Garlic, crushed or finely minced ·          3/4 T Sea Salt ·          fresh cracked Black Pepper, to taste ·          2 large Eggs, beaten ·          2 teaspoons potato starch ·      ...

We found ourselves not eating pancakes for a few Sundays, despite being home to make them.  Then when we finally decided to make Eritrean pancakes, we found we hadn't planned far enough ahead to be able to make them. So we made some lemon poppy seed pancakes once again, especially since it's that time of year when all of our lemons begin ripening.  If you missed our first blog on lemon poppy seed pancakes, here it is.  Enjoy!

We once again find ourselves traveling to El Salvador, this time in our kitchen.  We had a loooooong layover in El Salvador on our recent trip to Ecuador.  During our layover, we had the opportunity to eat Salvadoran pupusas, which is their version of a pancake.  They were quite tasty. To make your own Salvadoran pupusas, here is what you'll need: 2 cups masa harina 1 1/2 cups of water salt to taste 1/2 cup of shredded cheese that melts (we used jack) 1 can of black or pinto refried beans We didn't have refried black or pinto beans in the house, all we had were cans of whole black and pinto beans.  So I made my semi-homemade refried beans.  If you find yourself in the same situation, don't go buy refried beans, just make them.  To do this, measure 1 1/2 tablespoons of olive oil in a frying pan.  Add 1 clove of minced garlic and fry on medium heat until the garlic is golden brown. Apparently Sam was bored by my refried bean making, so he went outside wi...