I have had the perfect pancake recipe right under my nose for at least 4 years and never known it. It only took Gabrielle to make this crazy irrational decision to buy 3 lbs of blueberries. Naturally, the onus falls unto me to figure what to do with the bulk of them. And over the years, I’ve more or less given up on making some pancakes at home. The recipes are always a failure, or ridiculously complicated, or from a box, which is fine if you like your pancakes to be super lame. [Note: apparently this is not always true.] The short story is I used to get my pancakes out to breakfast, but no more! The best pancake recipe that I have ever made personally is in Chez Panisse Fruit, one of the many books by that highfalutin old windbag Alice Waters.
I have a love-hate relationship with the Chez Panisse/Alice Waters empire. While I acknowledge that they have done wonderful things in terms of the dynamics of being a restauranteur, and for food culture in general, I usually find Mrs. Waters pompous conveyance of her ideas to be a total turn-off. I’m sure that it appeals to the well-heeled among us, but if you really want to make a difference, you must appeal to everyone. I’m willing to over-look that kind of thing though because I’m on such a high-plane, aesthetically. And, the truth is, Chez Panisse does have some great recipes.
I actually made these ones with left-over batter from yesterdays breakfast, and they’re still killer. The top one is blueberry peach, and the bottom one is with blackberries. I don’t go in for that fruit-on-top approach. I like my berries in my pancake, dig? (Sorry, I just watched The Mack.) These are pure buttermilk joints, too. None of that mixture of different milks business. I don’t really drink milk, and as I mentioned above, I never really made pancakes, but every time I would make the venture to do so, I would always end up with a spoiled carton of buttermilk and vitamin d both up in the fridge. Forget all of that noise. I’m taking about pure buttermilk pancakes—-with a gang of berries up in ’em.
Recipe:
Ingredients:
• 2 cups Buttermilk
• 2 large eggs
• 6 Tablespoons Butter, melted
• 1.5 cups Unbleached all-purpose flour (I use cake flour)
• 1 Tablespoon Sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• Berries, fruit, whatever you like–look to Kenny Shopsin for inspiration
Beat the eggs into the buttermilk, then stir in the melted butter. Combine the flour, sugar, salt and baking soda. Gently stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, stirring until just combined. The batter should be a bit lumpy.
I’m not going to describe how to cook them, but I will say that I have been using 8″ non-stick skillets to cook mine, and they turn out pretty fucking perfect. I guess I’ll also add that you should add the berries onto the pancake as the first side is cooking, as opposed to the perhaps more logical approach of stirring the berries directly into the batter. Make these pancakes. If you have better ones I want to know about them and I’m dead serious.
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