Pancakes are my first food memory. I’m one of 8 kids (all girls, wrap your head around that) and one of about 27 cousins (I don’t even know the actual number) which made alone time with my grandparents really special.
pancakes
I like to throw parties, invite people over and make them feel at home. I like to make more than enough food, and for everyone to leave very full and with a take away bag of goodies. But the last time I had a little gathering at Casa De Dodd, I had overlooked my Gluten Free friends. I had remembered the vegetarians, and the vegans, the people who don’t drink beer, but for the ones who are allergic to gluten there wasn’t much. I felt terrible.
Gluten Free isn’t a fad diet. It isn’t Paleo or Raw or Weight Watchers. It isn’t a choice. It’s a medical condition and a food allergy that is one of the fasted growing diagnosed food allergies in the United States.
Gluten Free (Celiac’s Disease) people don’t want to give up bread. And regular pizza, or hamburger buns and flour tortillas, they don’t have much of a choice. Eat gluten free or become debilitatingly ill. Have you ever had food poisoning? In away, it’s like that.
And with over 3 million American’s allergic to gluten, chances are your next party may have one. It might even be you, Celiacs is most often diagnosed in adulthood. Because we want everyone who walks into our parties to feel at home, we all need to have a stock pile of appetizers to accommodate. Because unlike other diets, this isn’t a choice.
Because gluten is used as a thickener in tons of processed foods, it can easily hid in obscure places like canned soup, pre-made salad dressing, imitation crab, cheese spread and some brands of soy sauce.
At each party I need to have a few Celiac Friendly dishes that I made from scratch so that I can be sure there isn’t any rogue gluten waiting like a digestive ninja to attach my friends insides. Potatoes are a great place to start. Because who doesn’t love potatoes? It’s like not liking puppies or The Beatles.
So when you come across Gluten Free appetizers and dishes that you love, bookmark for them for gatherings. Because your friends would do it for you.
Cheesy Potato Pancakes with Jalapeno Sour Cream
Ingredients
- 1 cup red potatoes, grated with a cheese grater
- 1 egg
- 1 tbs masa (corn flour used to make corn tortillas)
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp black pepper
- 1/2 tsp onion powder
- pinch cayenne
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1/4 cup cheddar cheese, shredded (if using pre shredded, check to make sure it does not contain gluten)
- 1 cup sour cream
- 1 jalapeno, diced, stem and seeds removed
- 1/4 tsp smoked paprika
Instructions
- Place grated potatoes between several sheets of paper towels, press to remove some of the moisture. In a bowl, combine the grated potato, egg, masa, salt, pepper, cayenne and onion powder, mix until combined.
- Heat olive oil over medium high heat until hot but not smoking. Form potatoes into silver dollar sized pancakes about 1/4 inch thick. Add to the pan and cook until browned, about 2 minutes, then flip pancake. Top the pancakes with a small amount of cheddar cheese, cook until cheese is melted and underside of the pancake is browned, about an additional 3 minutes. Remove from pan and allow to drain on a paper towel.
- In a bowl, combine the sour cream, jalapenos and smoked paprika, mix. Top the potato pancakes with sour cream. Serve warm.
I’ve spent all day with an internal struggle about the limits of my acceptance of other people. Probably a much too serious intro for a post about pancakes, but bear with me, you might have some insight I could really use.
I’ve always prided myself on being a person who is able to see people for who they are, in the context of their own culture and life experiences and find beauty, talent and value without the qualification and framework of my own situation.
Whether it be a trailer park in South Central Los Angeles, a cave in Morocco, or a bus bench in Greece I’ve always been able to do that. Easily.
But today I was challenge with a though: what about hateful, small-minded, bigoted people?
What about racists?
The homophobic?
Are those people I should love and keep in my life?
I had an interaction with someone who left me wondering about my assertion that I have the anthropological capacity to care about other people regardless of who they are, what their beliefs or culture dictates, without judgement.
Can I judge someone merely for judging others? Isn’t that the epitome of hypocritical?
Isn’t the greater definition of open-minded and open-hearted to love those who are a challenge to love? I do believe that there is good in everyone. But is it worth it to try to dig past the hate and anger of a racist or homophobic friend or family member, or is that level of toxicity a fundamental deal breaker?
If you have some insight, let me know. For now I will proceed with caution, because the bottom line is I want to love everyone. I don’t want anyone, or any group of people, to be designated as a group I should hate. Because hate just breeds more hate.
Oatmeal Cookie Pancakes
Ingredients
- 1 cup flour
- 1/2 cup quick cooking oats
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 3 tbs brown sugar
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp nutmeg
- 1 egg
- 1 1/4 cup milk (use coconut milk for dairy free, this is what I used)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/3 cup raisins (plus more for garnish)
Instructions
- In a bowl add the flour, oats, salt, brown sugar, baking powder, brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg, mix until well combined. Make a well in the dry ingredients, add the milk, egg and vanilla, stir until just combined. Add the raisins and stir.
- Heat a griddle or skillet over medium heat, coat with cooking spray.
- Drop about 1/4 cup of batter on the hot griddle. Cook until dry on the edges and bubbles start to form in the center. Flip and cook on the other side until cooked through, about 2 more minutes.
(Yield: 6-8 pancakes)
I’m in the process of developing a beer scale for the recipes I write. A scale that lets you know how much beer flavor comes through upon the final result. From the low end being, "Mild Hints of Beer Flavors" to the high end of "Strong Bold Forward Beer Taste."
Some people want to be smacked in the mouth with the flavor of beer, while others want the flavors to fly under the radar, yielding a treat they serve to unwitting non-beer lovers. This pancake recipe falls right in the middle. Beer that is tastable, but mild.
The difficulty with a scale such as this is that the type of beer you use has a direct result on the "beery-ness" of your final product. While the most important aspect of choosing a beer for your recipes is matching flavor profiles between your beer and the recipe, the second aspect is finding the right level to suit your desired level of beer taste.
There are a few tricks you can use to adjust the levels of beer taste to suit your needs. If you want to increase the amount of beer you taste, simply adding more beer may not work due to the fact that you will be increasing the amount of liquid in the recipe by doing so. If the recipe calls for "1 cup of beer" then try putting two cups of beer in a pot on the stove and cooking until it has reduced to 1 cup. This will remove water from the beer and intensify the beer flavors. One thing to keep in mind is that beer is often used as a leavening agent and cooking your beer prior to adding it to a recipe can remove those effects.
If you want to decrease the beer taste, substitute some of the beer for a non-beer liquid such as broth, water or juice, depending on the recipe. Or, if the beer is being used as a leavening agent (as in this pancake recipe) try to substitute with carbonated soda water.
If you want to increase the flavor of beer, look for beers that have a strong "malt forward" or "hop forward" taste notes, but beware of too hoppy beers (Such as IPA’s) because when reduced, they are very bitter.
Cooking and baking with craft beer is a journey, there will be a certain level of experimentation, success and failures that you should expect when trying forage ahead in a field that is growing with huge popularity, but with very few who have gone before us. In a lot of ways, this is uncharted water. We should learn from every batch, making note of what works and what doesn’t. Thanks for joining along the road.
For this recipe, I choose Mission Amber Ale because it has notes of caramel and malt, but with a balanced hop flavor. If you want to make this recipe and can’t find Mission Amber Ale, look for an amber with notes of caramel, maple, brown sugar, cloves, or cinnamon with low or balance hop notes.
Beer and Brown Sugar Pancakes
1 cup all purpose flour
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
1 egg plus 1 additional yolk
2 tbs canola oil
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 cup Amber Ale Beer
(makes 10-12)
In a bowl add the flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, and baking powder, whisk to combine.
In a small bowl, add the egg, the additional yolk, vanilla and the oil whisk until well combined.
Make a well in the dry ingredients, add the egg mixture and beer to the center and whisk to combine.
Heat a skillet or griddle until hot. Spray with butter flavored cooking spray or brush with melted butter. Pour about 1/4 cup of the batter onto the hot griddle. Once bubbles appear in the middle of the pancakes and the edges start to look dry, flip the pancakes and cook on the other side until cooked through, about 5 minutes total (2.5 minutes per side).
*For this recipe, plain Grade A Syrup just didn’t seem to be enough for me. I put 3/4 cup of syrup and 1/2 cup of the Amber Ale in a pot on the stove over high heat for about 10 minutes and it thickened and reduced to a caramely syrup that was perfect.
As a kid there were a few phrases that take an ordinary day and give it a bit of a sparkle. Like hearing the name of YOUR school being read over the radio as a closure for a Snow Day. Or hearing: "Let’s go get ice cream!" or, one of my favorites: "Breakfast For Dinner!!"
And now that I am a mom, I want to have breakfast for dinner too. It’s fun. But then I have the responsibility of an entire humans future health on my hands. That’s a lot of pressure. The way I reconcile these two things is by taking an ordinary pancake and filling it with a slice of fruit. Breakfast for dinner and a serving of wholesome fruit.
These babies only have 60 calories each. And you don’t even need massive amounts of syrup, the apple in the middle has the flavor and moisture to compensate.
Apple Ring Pancakes
2 large apples (I used Fuji Apples)
1 cup of flour
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup reduced fat (or fat free) sour cream
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup sparklink water or club soda
(yields about 20 apple ring pancakes)
Preheat a griddle to 375, or use a large skillet. Coat with butter flavored cooking spray prior to cooking pancakes.
Peel and core the apples (I use this apple corer all the time). Cut the apples into 1/4 to 1/2 inch slices. Thicker slices will give you a crispier apple once cooked and a thinner slice will give you a softer apple once cooked.
In a large bowl, combine the flour, brown sugar, baking powder, nutmeg, cinnamon and salt until well mixed. In a separate bowl, add the sour cream, egg and vanilla, mix until well combined. Make a well in the dry ingredients, add the wet ingredients and stir until just barely combined. Add the sparkling water and stir. One at a time, dip the apple slices into the batter and place on the hot griddle. Allow the pancakes to cook until the edges start to look dry and then flip over, cooking on the other side until golden brown, about 3 minutes per side. Repeat for all apple slices.
You don’t need syrup for these little guys but I couldn’t resist using the last of that Coconut Caramel Sauce that I made the other day. So good.
