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| Getting bearings in the new kitchen - HELLO COUNTER SPACE! |
Moving is a pain in the butt.
It takes organization, preparation, and a lot of caffeine. I had two of those three. Okay... maybe one and a half.
Sometimes you gotta' do the thing that's hard. It builds your emotional muscle (and sometimes you're physical muscle). It makes you grown.
At what point do we become adults? When we buy our first replacement toothbrush? When we get under the sink to figure out how exactly our garbage disposal works (and why it's clogged and making those godawful noises?)? These things happen to adults. We are becoming those adults in these sort of situations. Whoa... that's crazy.
This morning, my adult self set out to make my grandmother's morning specialty, Pannekeoken with stroop. That may read like some strange disease, but in actuality, it's a thin pancake with a syrup like you wouldn't believe. There isn't really a true recipe to follow, but rather one built upon from memory. I remember watching my Oma in the kitchen making a stack of these that was bigger than my head. My cousins, brother and I would all talk up how many we were going to eat, when in actuality we'd only have two. Maybe three, if we'd starved ourselves the night before. As we got older and our stomachs stretched out, we put away more. Barely.
The recipe for my favorite breakfast food reads more like a paragraph. You have to work at it. Watch someone you love make it. Try it over and over again. And then teach it to someone else you love.
Can't wait to make this again, once all my moving is done. Hope you're worlds are well.
These are thin pancakes. Less on the "cake", heavy on the "pan". They're really just vehicles for the main event, which is the stroop. But you can't put stroop on just anything, and so we need pannekeoken.
It's roughly 1 cup of flour, 1 egg, and enough milk to make a thin pancake batter. Lumps are not a bad thing. Sometimes we are all a little lumpy.
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| Big ol' ball of sunshine. |
Once you've whisked the egg and milk in, you can adjust the batter to make it thicker or thinner by adding more flour or milk. Just... don't go crazy. You'll need practice, and this makes enough for just two people.
Put 1 tablespoon of butter into a large, nonstick, rounded edge pan (cast iron worked quite well this morning for me), and let brown. All those brown bits of butter fat create a slightly sweet, nutty flavor that you won't want to ever live without. Trust.
Once the butter is browned, spoon enough of the batter into the center of the pan, swirling it around until it just covers the surface of the pan. Let the pannekeok start to cook, then shake the pan vigorously (it should slide around on the surface of melted butter). Once the entire pannekeok is matte in finish and is starting to brown and curl on the edge, flip and cook on the other side. Slide onto a plate (see below).
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| Dear dutch relatives: I know this is not dark enough, but it's been a long time since I've made these... I'll practice and make them better next time. I promise. |
Now comes the magical part...
Stroop. Stroop is... so amazing. It's thick like molasses, sweet and dark with a slightly smoky flavor. It used to come in a cardboard canister that got sticky and harder to open the more you used it. Apparently someone got smart at the stroop factory and put it in squeeze bottles. Genius.
Drizzle the stroop down the center of your pannekeok (or you can use butter and powdered sugar, which is also scrumptious).
Take your fork and hook the curve of the pannekeok and use it to roll it into a tube.
OMG I'm getting hungry...
Slice it with your fork (knives are silly and unnecessary here). Eat it. I dare you to eat two whole ones.
Thanks for reading (that mostly goes out to my family, girlfriend, and Ashley, which are probably the only ones that read this). I'll post more soon once I've unearthed more of my bakeware and have the pantry all put together (see: IKEA shelving).
-Kasey