For this week's French Fridays with Dorie, we were asked to make a dish which seemed all American rather than French - corn pancakes. However, I will have to take Dorie's word for it that they are indeed of French origin.
These little pancakes consist of nothing but corn and flour and egg and salt - seriously. You blitz the ingredients in a food processor, and fry small spoonfuls of the thick batter in a skillet of hot oil. Definitely not hard or time consuming.
I made a half batch and ate it for a weekend breakfast. I simply spread my pancakes with honey. The recipe said it serves six, but I gather this is when you serve the pancakes as a side with other things, so I don't think that eating a half batch myself was particularly gluttinous, bearing in mind that these pancakes are tiny.
The verdict? Pancakes are pancakes - these were neither better nor worse than any other pancakes I have ever had, but may be nutritionally better for you than the normal flour egg and milk version because of the corn.
Here is a pancake breakfast that I had at Dennys in Scottsdale, AZ while I was on holidays:
Dennys became the eatery of choice for many on our bus tour because of the generous servings and afforable price. Our tour director called it "Chez Denays". These pancakes stumped me - I got two whole-wheat pancakes, which came with sides of maple syrup, whipped butter, two pieces of bacon, two eggs (sunny side up in my case) and potatoes. I became all flustered when ordering, as I could have also added add-ins to the pancakes (such as bacon bits or chocolate chips), and ordered another topping (strawberry syrup anyone?). This was the standard serving - I did not ask for all of this with the pancakes. Wow! I think it cost $5.95 - you'd never get this for that price in Oz.
To see what the other FFwD people thought of the corn pancakes, visit the LYL section of the FFwD website.
Have a great weekend folks.
