Dutch Pancakes

Serious Eats, one of my favorite blogs, hosts a weekend cooking share post every weekend. Usually, I don't catch them in time to participate but last week I did. The theme was pancakes. This hit very close to home for me as one of the first things that I learned to make by myself was Biscuit box mix pancakes.

In our family, there was a mini-tradition of making these on Saturday morning, with a side of cartoons. The ritual was that whichever older child got up first made the batter and then cooked these for the younger ones. Chocolate chips were added only rarely but butter and syrup were usually generously applied. As we're all now quite spread out geographically, we haven't been together to continue this in years.

It's no wonder then that when I saw this cooking suggestion on Serious Eats, my tastebuds were dreaming about lost weekends and remembering a plate of poffertjes that I had at the New Amsterdam Dutch days celebration a couple of weeks ago. While waiting to get into the mini village that had been set up for the occasion, I saw people eating these little paper containers of something that looked good. Wandering around the market, I came across the stand where they were being made.

Pouring the batter via a funnel into the molds

Flipping them from one side to the other to continue cooking

My Summer Reading

After seeing the Julie/Julia movie, I decided that I wanted to read more about Julia Child's life, which is also partially why I haven't posted for a couple of weeks. I picked up one biography that was written before her death and also the book in which Mrs. Child described her introduction to French food and the journey that created Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Unfortunately, this had the effect of making me long even more for an entire movie starring Meryl Streep as Julia. The dedication and passion with which Julia Child tackled this project and her determination that American cooks have a chance to learn about this wonderful cuisine made me feel not a little bit guilty that I haven't tried to make things from her books more often.


While reading My Life in France, Julia mentions a dish called Piperade (on p. 183), that her friend Avis De Voto raved about. Aside from the general hunger pangs that reading these books caused, this reference was to a dish that I actually have made several times before which made me dig the recipe out of my own personal 'archive.' That and seeing late-summer tomatoes, ripe red peppers, and fragrant basil at the Greenmarket inspired me to put the books down and to actually make something. The clipping is from The Sunday Times of London about 11 years ago.