My main problem with Pancake Day is its lack of imagination. You’re about to embark on a gruelling period of fasting and abstinence. You’ve got a surplus of fatty foods; eggs, milk and the like you need to be rid of. But instead of one last glorious day gorging yourself silly on biscuits and cake you rustle up a flaccid foodstuff that’s as flat… well, as a pancake.
Banal as the batter might be it’s not as limp as the fillings we fill them with. I don’t want Nutella on toast for my tea and my stomach demands more than a sprinkling of sugar. Shipping in ingredients isn’t the Shrove way so how do you pimp your pancakes with what’s left in the fridge?
My housemates were charged with creating the finest pancake fillings from food they could find forgotten in the cupboards. Some cream, five mushrooms, a fennel bulb, one banana, goat’s cheese, some piccalilli and half a bottle of Kahlua: a delicious mix, well at least one to put you off eating for a while.
Starting simple, housemate number one rustled up an avant-garde appetiser pancake filled with scrapings from the piccalilli jar and a smearing of goat’s cheese. It sounded foul but tasted fantastic, the sharp pickle cutting through the cloying cheese. More of an effort for the main: fennel and mushrooms sautéed in a pan with a splash of cream and a little of the cheese. Scrumptious, if a little rich, but packed with fennel flavour. And so to dessert and the pancake pièce de résistance: bananas cooked in brown sugar with a dousing of Kahlua – a boozy bonanza that tripped the taste fantastic.
That’s three courses of pancake magic and not a jar of chocolate spread in sight. Could you do better with your languishing leftovers?
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