First of all, let me just say that I went about this all
wrong. Now, I wouldn't go so far as to
call this project a complete failure;
but truth be told, I had a good mind to scrap this post and start all over when
I realized my stupidity. Being as I am American,
what do you think comes to mind when I think of bacon pancakes? Why, flapjacks with bacon mixed in, that's
what. But a person from Sweden, where The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo takes
place, might think of something else.
More on that at the end of this post. Since I am a novice food blogger,
however, I decided to allow myself to be an idiot on occasion; and besides,
hardly anyone will read this anyway. Now
onward we go.
Last summer I read the Millennium
trilogy by Stieg Larsson. (I'm
devouring books again this summer, but
so far I haven't come across any food that I'm inspired to cook; there is still
a month and a half left, though, and I'm sure I'll come up with something!) Back in January I made some DELICIOUS lamb
chops like the ones the main character, Mikael Blomkvist cooks. (For the recipe
and more about the story and its characters, click here.) Oh, and recently we watched The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo starring
Daniel Craig. In my post from last winter I said I was afraid that I wouldn't like that film as much as the
Swedish-language one, because Noomi Rapace is so amazing as Lisbeth Salander I
wasn't sure if anyone else would do the character justice. Not to worry.
The actress who plays Lisbeth in this film, Rooney Mara, is just as
good. And I can't wait to see Noomi in Prometheus; at this point it looks like
we'll be waiting for the DVD. Joe is
anxious to see that one too, because of Charlize Theron.)
In The Girl With the
Dragon Tattoo, Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative journalist, has been
doing some research for the rich and powerful Henrik Vanger, regarding a niece
that went missing years ago. He has just
returned to Henrik's home on Hedeby Island after serving jail time because of a
scandal involving Blomkvist's magazine, Millennium.
(Interestingly, they left this detail out of the Daniel Craig movie, but not
the Swedish one.)
He found Vanger on the ground floor. The old man raised his eyebrows in surprise when he saw Mikael.
"Did you escape?"
"Released early."
"That's a surprise."
"For me too. I found out last night."
They looked at each other for a few seconds. then the old man surprised Blomkvist by throwing his arms around him and giving him a bear hug.
"I was just about to eat. Join me."
Anna produced a great quantity of bacon pancakes with lingonberries. They sat there in the dining room and talked for almost two hours. Blomkvist told him about how far he had got with the family chronicle, and where there were holes and gaps. They did not talk at all about Harriet...
(The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, p. 277)
Well, I had never heard of lingonberries, and I made a
mental note to find out what they are and where (or if) I could find them. Recently as I was searching the grocery store
shelves for maraschino cherries, I spotted a jar of lingonberries and grabbed
it. Inside the jar was something that
looked like wild blueberry preserves, except it was red; the stuff was tart and
yummy, and tasted like cranberry sauce, only a little bit sweeter. Rightly so; according to AboutDotCom,
lingonberries are found all over Scandanavia, and are a cousin to the
cranberry. (HA! I knew it.)
The other night I needed to cook something quick and I
decided to break out the bacon and lingonberries and make a "Blog
Dinner," as I've recently started calling them. I poked around online a little bit to find
recipes for bacon pancakes (here is where I went wrong, more below), and most
of the ones I found were recipes for plain old pancakes, with crumbled bacon as
an ingredient. There were one or two
that consisted of a slice of bacon coated in pancake batter, but those didn't
really appeal to me. I decided to just add bacon to a pancake
recipe that I've recently kind of adopted as my own. You see, for years I've been using a recipe
for buttermilk pancakes from my favorite cookbook, The Ultimate Southern Living Cookbook, and adapting it slightly to
meet Moe's food allergy needs. When we
visit my parents, my mother always makes pancakes using a recipe she found on
the outside of the Ener-G Egg Replacer package; the ingredients for those
include orange juice, cinnamon, and nutmeg, which makes a unique and delicious
flapjack. After the boys begged and
begged me to make THOSE pancakes, I took my Southern Living recipe and
substituted half the milk (or soymilk, in our case) for orange juice, and added
cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar, and vanilla.
Here's the recipe that I came up with (starred items are the ones I
added):
ZESTY ORANGE PANCAKES (I made that up just now; it's cheesy,
I know...)
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon nutmeg*
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon*
2 large eggs, lightly beaten (or 1 heaping tablespoon Ener-G
Egg Replacer beaten together with 1/4 cup water)
1 cup milk (I use soy or rice milk; the recipe in the book
calls for buttermilk)
1 cup orange juice*
2 teaspoons vanilla extract*
1/4 cup vegetable oil
Crumbled cooked bacon (optional; I didn't measure it, but I
would guess I used about a half to 2/3 of a package)
Combine first 7 ingredients; stir well. Combine eggs, milk, orange juice, vanilla,
and oil in a bowl; add to flour mixture, stirring just until dry ingredients
are moistened. Fold in crumbled bacon.
For each pancake, pour about 1/4 cup batter onto a hot,
lightly greased griddle. (To make these
even more bacon-y, I used the leftover bacon grease.) Cook pancakes until tops are covered with
bubbles and edges look cooked; turn and cook other side. Serve with lingonberries, syrup, or whatever
topping you like.
(Adapted from The
Ultimate Southern Living Cookbook, p. 72-73)
To further complicate things, I wanted to make gluten free
bacon pancakes for myself, so I pulled out my new best friend, Gluten Free
Bisquick. I just followed the recipe on
the back, and like with the "regular" hotcakes, I used orange juice,
cinnamon, nutmeg, and sugar. And bacon,
of course. Easy-peasy; and if you're
scared of gluten free pancakes, Gluten Free Bisquick will cure you of
that. You're welcome.
Now for the verdict.
When the boys asked the nightly question, "What's For Dinner?"
and I said, "Bacon Pancakes,"
they all kind of wrinkled their noses and said, "Oh. That sounds terrible." Even Joe wasn't too thrilled with that
idea. Turns out that unbeknownst to me,
Joe doesn't like the orange juice
pancakes! He never told me. And nobody liked the idea of the bacon inside the pancake; they would rather
eat it separately. (Sheesh. They said they wished I would have made some
of them with bacon and some without. I
figured since everyone likes pancakes and everyone likes bacon this wouldn't be
a problem.) I will have to give Curly,
our thirteen-year-old who eats everything, credit for not complaining, and saying that even though he would rather eat
his bacon on the side, he liked them and would
eat the leftovers. I wanted to hug
him. And how many people tried the
lingonberries? One. Me.
They were delicious with the bacon pancakes. Then again, I'm the only one in my family who
likes cranberries.
So what did I think? I liked mine, although in defense of those
who wanted their bacon on the side, I will say that some of the flavor of the
bacon was lost in the pancakes. I don't
know if this is because I used the special recipe with orange juice and spices,
and that was what masked the bacon; but truthfully I would just as soon had my
bacon separately as well. The next time
I make gluten free pancakes for myself--without all that extra stuff--I might
crumble some bacon into some of them just to see if that makes a
difference. BUT, I liked them well enough
to have them for lunch the next day--with lingonberries, of course--and for breakfast just this morning. I have two left, safely stored in my freezer for later consumption.
And now for the post-script.
After making this meal (and writing most of this blog post), I decided
to see what would happen if I Googled SWEDISH bacon pancakes, and guess
what? I found recipes that are COMPLETELY
different from your run-of-the-mill flapjacks with bacon added in. Holy crap!
I'm dope-slapping myself. Why
didn't I think of that BEFORE?? I even
found a blog post by a fan of The Girl
With the Dragon Tattoo, and the person made--you guessed it--Swedish bacon
pancakes. Those look more like a
frittata, with lots of eggs and little or no flour. (One site described it as
being like a Yorkshire pudding, except I don't really know what THAT is!) I definitely think a do-over is in order.
Be sure to check back here soon for my first meal from the
Nicholas Sparks book, The Last Song: Summer Spaghetti!
No comments:
Post a Comment