Le plus gras de tous

[muckefuck]

Today I dragged myself into work for one reason and one reason alone: pączki. Before I heard that our staff organisation was going to be selling them as a fundraiser, I was considering wheedling the Old Man into stopping by Swedish Bakery for them.[*] In the end, it wasn't necessary. Anticipating a crush, I came five minutes early, but the organiser was insistent that no sales would be made before 9:30 on the dot. By 9:37, the last pączek in a box of three dozen had been snatched up. People mostly grabbed their goods and ran, but I stayed around to catch the looks of incredulity on the faces of disappointed colleagues. By noon, though, I decided I'd had enough and headed home in plenty of time to screw up monshu's cleaning schedule. But though he put off vacuuming, no one had asked the workmen next door to still their power tools, so between them and a rather needy feline, I didn't catch many winks.

I'd already promised him dinner as a Fat Tuesday treat and chosen a recipe which would be relatively easy to throw together after a day's work: an oven-baked pancake. It was a simple recipe--4 eggs, 1 cup milk, 1 cup flour, bake in a hot cast-iron skillet at 425º for 20 mins--that I made a few modifications to. With the Walker Brothers' Danish Garden in mind, I sliced up a zucchini and salted it to get some water out. (The original recipe calls only for a small amount of green onion.) Instead of heating butter in the skillet, I used it to fry the bacon and then supplemented the grease with some corn oil. Since I was worried about the extra weight on top, I beat the whites separately and folded them, plus I added a pinch of baking powder. The result was somewhere between a savoury pancake, a soufflée, and a floury frittata. I used whole wheat flour as per the recipe, which I think next time I might mix with a little buckwheat flour. The GWO loved it.

Were I a little less worn out, I might've attempted another tesenn saffron, but between today's meal and last weekend's almond cake, that's probably enough seasonal baking for a while. Besides, I still have the ambition of trying Staffordshire oatcakes according to this recipe. I bought the oat flour along with the whole wheat, but it's going to have to wait for a weekend when I've got time to let something rise before flipping it in a skillet.


[*] This is Chicago; pączki have long since escaped their ethnic niche.

Comments

[come-to-think.livejournal.com]

They are a form of oatmeal, which (in Staffordshire) is supposed to be made by scattering the oatmeal in boiling milk, whereupon it forms little balls that are crisp on the inside. It has never worked for me, tho I have tried various coarsenesses of meal. For extensive discussion and a celebratory song, seehttp://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=38200#2671781