Pancake Breakfast

After arriving back in Maine last April, I reconnected with the farmer network that I grew up with, plus friends from high school still living in the area. I helped Jean Noon muck out a stall and got paid with a truck full of sheep manure. I helped Jordan of Two Toad Farm plant out onions, and met another farmsteader who was also there helping out. Jordan's partner Marybeth organizes the Sanford Farmers Market. Through her we've connected with new local farmers as well.

Jean Noon of Noon Family Sheep Farm was one of the first organic lamb producers in the US. Just out of college, she and her husband Bill brought their whole menagerie (horse, cows, sheep, pigs, dogs, cats, and every descripion of fowl) here from Vermont and farmed at our place for several years before buying their own farm down the road. She still runs sheep there today.

It's been quite the slog resurrecting the old farmhouse that I spent my teen years in. As soon as Mary and I had the kitchen cleaned up and organized, I wanted to invite folks over. One thing I was known for as a youth was pancakes. I never used a recipe. I ground my own flour in a hand mill and made endless varieties -- different grains, nuts and seeds, strange add-ins, from fruit to peanut butter to fresh cut sweet corn. So we invited everyone over for a Sunday pancake and bacon breakfast just after New Year's.

Making pancakes is different now that I don't use wheat. I can still tolerate organic wheat and rye, but Mary is celiac and sensitive even when it's just in the house. So we keep a gluten-free kitchen. The thing that I've realized is that you don't need wheat for most things. We make our pies and pancakes with organic white rice flour. There's all kinds of gluten free mixes you can buy in stores, but none of them work as well as 100% white rice flour, for me. I've gotten so used it I now strongly prefer the experience. My occasional excursions back into wheat flour are always disappointing.

To make pancakes, almost every variation is a riff on the basic formula: crack two eggs (or 3 or 4) into a mixing bowl. Add a touch of molasses, honey, or something else sweet. Add salt and oil. My go-to oil nowadays is olive oil, but avacado oil is good, or walnut or grapeseed oil. Melted butter, lard, and tallow also work. I never cook with the seed oils I grew up on: canola, safflower, and sunflower oils have all proven to be hazardous to human health.

After whisking or forking the egg and oil mix, some combination of water and milk fills out the liquid portion. It can be all milk no water, all water no milk, 50/50 or any other ratio.

I used to mix all the dry ingredients in a separate bowl, then gradually whisk or stir it into the wet. Now I skip the second mixing bowl and unceremoniously dump the flour into the wet. I top it off with baking powder. The proper ratio is one teaspoon per cup of flour. Or is it one tablespoon? It doesn't matter, so I don't measure it. (It's one teasoon, for the record). A whisk is alway best, but you can stir it with any handy object, as long as it's clean. Like cornbread, you want to stir it as little as possible. Baking powder looses its leavening effect if you stir beyond what's required to get all the flour in direct contact with liquid.

If the batter is too thin, I add more flour. If the batter is too stiff, too bad. Mixing in more liquid is not a good option, because by definition, that is over-stirring. Too runny or too stiff is not really a problem anyway, those are all valid interpretations of the pancake experience.

I always cook in butter. No butter? Improvise. Even bacon grease is good, for a more savory effect. If you know in advance you'll be cooking your cakes in bacon grease (as opposed to "oh sh** I'm out of butter, what'll I do?), you might even decide to put minced onion or frozen peas in the batter. Savory pancakes are excellent. In fact, while I'm on the subject, Asian-style scallion pancakes are made with all rice flour! See? What makes scallion pancakes different is no eggs and no leavening. Instead, you boil water and pour it over the flour and let it sit a bit. Add salt and scallions and you're in for a treat.

Well, for our New Year's pancake breakfast, I saw I had both molasses and corn flour. I remembered making Anadama Bread, a traditional New England food from the time when molasses was a keystone of the economy. (In these parts, we still remember the Great Molasses Flood.) Anadama bread is wheat and corn and molasses. So I thought I'd try a rice and corn and molasses version. Not being totally confident it would work out. I also made a second batter using buckwheat and rice. Of course buckwheat pancakes are a Maritime thing, the Acadian version of which are called "ployes." Always a hit.

The pancakes were gone, of both varieties, along with all the bacon, as quickly as I could get them off the griddle, so I think the Anadama worked out just fine. The saving grace was the maple syrup that Jordan brought, from another farm friend.

The nice thing about inviting farmers over is the kind of house gifts they bring. Marybeth brought a little jar of her famous roasted garlic powder. The tiniest sprinkle of fairy dust from that little glass vial turns any savory dish into shear heaven. Jean brought us some fabulous mutton sausage. Annette and Frankie brought us the most delicious dozen of fresh eggs from their chickens.

Just like I remember, crowded as it was, no one wanted to leave the room. Something about this kitchen, with its high-ceilinged walls the color of lemon curd, south windows, and 8-burner mint green 100-year old Atlantic wood cookstove, makes it the social center of the house. We've rarely managed to get people to gather in any other room.

People spun out and reconneced long looping threads recounting when they first set foot in the kitchen, or when they first met my mom Marty, and all that had taken place in the intervening years. Marty had run the local food coop, largely out of the kitchen, until it moved into town to a local pottery shop. People asked if I could please restart the food coop.

The only I thing I agreed to was to host the next breakfast, as soon as the center chimney work is completed and we can bake bread in the beehive oven. Getting farmers to leave home is near impossible once the weather breaks, so I hope we get the hearth back together soon.