It's Pancake Day

Yes it's pancake day, yes it's p-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-panake day

EVERY day is pancake day in my house. Well not quite every day - I am not insane - but I do make a lot of pancakes. Not because I am particularly partial to pancakes, mind; I mean I like them but let’s not go crazy. I make them because I like making them. Even if I’m not consuming them. Same with cocktails, come to think of it. The ritual is the thing.

If I am up slightly ahead of the beat of the house on a Saturday morning, I like to mooch down to the kitchen, put on a good album, make coffee, clear the detritus from the night before and set about cracking eggs and sifting flour. If I manage to do this before the downstairs fills up, the weekend will be a good one. Everyone is happy when there are pancakes. And eggs and bacon and maple syrup and bananas and Greek yoghurt and various palm-oil based spreads and the ingredients for crêpes Suzette - but mostly pancakes. Pancake batter is a handy thing to have around, too. It can be turned into lunch quite easily - cook one side of the pancake, flip, grate cheese, fold, flash fry each half until melted, serve with a crisp salad with a punchy vinaigrette and some toasted walnuts. Pancakes are great vehicles for snack solos, too.

And they can be filled with Chartreuse-soaked buttercream, set on fire and be consumed as dessert. Because when every day is pancake day, you need to do something quite special for actual pancake day.

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HOW TO MAKE REALLY GOOD PANCAKES

Now, as with cocktails - and food photography, ahem - I’m not all that fussed about getting pancakes exactly right. Perfectionism is for the imperfect. My pancakes will be slightly different each time and that’s OK. Sometimes I have buckwheat flour (the key to Russian blinchiki as well as Breton galettes) and I might throw in some dark rye for good measure. The other day I shoved some oats in the Nutribullet and made some oat flour and I was glad I did. And then sometimes I use plain old plain. Likewise, I might I veer towards the fluffy American (/Scotch?) model with baking soda, buttermilk and whisked egg whites. But I also might want them gossamer thin like streetside crêpes. Mostly, however, I’m just going for the classic Shrove Tuesday mainstays - which I once forced an actual French person to admit are best with the simple English combination of lemon and sugar. Pancakes are always good.

I’m sure perfection could theoretically be acheived, were I to be a bit more methodical about the whole thing. But that’s never exactly my aim. On occasion I need to pass the batter through a sieve to remove the lumps (Russian proverb: the first pancake is always lumpy). Or I might resort to an electric whisk - though overmixing is to be avoided, as it has the adverse effect of activating the gluten in the flour, making for dense and undynamic pancakes. Still, when I feel I need a refresh, I will return to one of two sources. The Breakfast Bible for the American pancake recipe. And the compendious Larousse Gastronomique for the ur-crêpe recipe which I’ve adapted as follows:

Basic Pancake Batter
(Makes about 24 medium sized pancakes)

500g sifted plain flour (or 250g buckwheat + 250g plain flour)
5-6 beaten eggs
500ml milk
500ml water
20ml sunflower oil
Salt

All you need to do is this. Sieve the flour into a large bowl. Beat the eggs in a separate vessel and pour them in. Now, gardually, add the milk (and then water) and stir. Be careful and patient to avoid clumping. You can speed things up towards the end. You’re aiming for the consistency of single cream.

The Cabinet: Green Chartreuse

🥞

That’s really all there is to it. Other than to say that the batter should ideally be rested for an hour or two prior to cooking - and then thinned out just a little with a dash of water. And as with cocktails, you can make less if you prefer (I usually make a three-egg version actually) and also make substitutions as long as you keep first principles in mind. Use a variety of flours (though I recommend at least 50% plain flour). Use beer as the liquid if you fancy, too - this is particulalry good for savoury pancakes.

You can also make a specifically sweet crepe batter. Use all plain flour for this; add a tablespoon of caster sugar and a dash of vanilla essence; replace some of the sunflower oil with melted butter and dash in a measure of “rum, cognac, calvados or Grand Marnier depending on the recipe” (says Larousse). The French will also often add orange flower water to their sweet pancake batter which makes gives them a nice etheral bloom.

To cook the pancakes, the trick is to get the pan hot first. You don’t want it sizzling, you want it on a medium heat and you don’t want loads of butter, you just want a light smear to avoid it all sticking. (I use a pastry brush for this). Add a ladleful of batter to the pain, tilt it this way and that to coat the surface, and leave it for about 45 seconds, whereupon you beging the process of ungripping for the flipping. The fun part.

HOW TO MAKE CRÊPES CHARTREUSE

Larousse Gastronomique is one of the funniest books I own. I love the way it combines useful recipes (such as the above) with recipes that are clearly insane with absolutely no qualifying explanation. You look up hollandaise - and there is invariably a variant asking you to throw in eight morels and 250g of foie gras into the mix or to flambé six rooster’s combs in a bottle of bas-armagnac, wrap them in jambon de Paris - and then discard.

A case in point is the recipe for Charteuse Crêpes which is one of the two dozen or so regional pancake variants following the basic sweet crêpes recipe.

Not only are you required to add three tablespoons of a monastic liqueur that retails for £50 a bottle here in the UK (and upwards of $100(!) in the US since the silent order who makes it aren’t inclined to up production to suit the needs of global capital, non merci. You must additionally find (or make from scratch?) both meringues AND macarons and also lob some Cognac in for good measure.

Still, the sheer implausibility of the recipe was in the end outweighed by the imagined deliciousness of the result and so, last night, goddam it, I finally made it - albeit with a few tweaks. I deemed the meringues essential (and easy enough to source in the supermarché) but omitted the macarons adding instead a dash of almond essence to the batter (a spoonful of ground almonds and/or a dash of amaretto might not go amiss too). So here’s how I did it.

Chartreuse Buttercream
Three meringues (shop-bought is fine)
50g softened butter
50g caster sugar
30ml green Chartreuse

Pulverise the meringues to dust in a large bowl. In a separate bowl (small is best) whisk together the softened butter and sugar until you have a light, airy buttercream. Then add the Chartreuse and the meringue dust until you have a greenish cream.

Sweet Crêpe Batter
~200ml basic pancake batter (above) plus:
One dessertspoon of caster sugar
Grated zest of an orange
20ml dark rum (or cognac)
20ml melted butter
Dash almond essence

Now. Larousse counsels you to cook the crêpes as normal, then spread them with the alcoholic filling, fold into four and eat just like that (possibly sprinkled with some icing sugar, if you feel the need for more sugar). I did this and the Chartreuse Buttercream was the most Chartreuse-y substance imaginable and actually, considering it requires a mere shot of the stuff, means Crêpes Chartreuse is actually a relatively economical way of acheiving maximal impact from this divine ingredient. Only - who could have guessed? - the result is thumpingly alcoholic.

So what I did with the next pancake was to spread it with the buttercream, fold it in half, return it to the pan and SET IT ON FIRE. Fucking hell, friends. This was really living. The 55% ABV of the Chartreuse makes a potent flambé fuel - but the really amazing thing is what it all does to those crushed meringues, which caramelise into a sort of sticky-herbal-cinder-glaze that makes the pancakes crunch and crackle in the most moreish way. I then spread half a spoon of Chartreuse buttercream onto the result and ate with crème fraiche - because you will need something to cut that richness. What are we, kings?

I suppose you could use some other liqueur. Cherry brandy might be nice. Grand Marnier or Cointreau (plus oranges) would give you something closer to the classic Crêpes Suzette. But today, I feel, you should make Crêpes Chartreuse and eat them very hot.