Passionfruit Butter

I have recently been possessed by an urge to make savory pancakes. What I really love are cornmeal pancakes with sweet pulled pork on top, but of course these things don’t grow on trees and I wanted something a little bit easier to make. I settled on a scallion pancakes recipe, but it may well be that the cornmeal+sweet pulled pork route would’ve been simpler.

As it turns out, in addition to some flour, water, oil, kosher salt, and green onions, one also needs A) kneading skills and B) a rolling pin, of which I have neither. (For those of you who are shocked and offended, rolling pins abound at my New Orleans house- there just aren’t any here at the beach house where I’m spring breaking). This complicated things very early in the game, but late enough that I wasn’t going to give up.

The taste itself wasn’t bad at all (how bad could it be, when it’s comprised of green onions and kosher salt and cooked in oil?): the salt lent it a pretzelly simple pleasure, and the warm nibble of a pancake (any kind at all) is unfailingly satisfying. However, the main problem was simply that, in my lack of kneading skills, I kept having to add bit by bit of flour to keep the dough from sticking to my hands and my countertop. It’s not like I added it in quarter-cup increments (seriously, it was probably just by half-teaspoon-ful little-bits), but with all the kneading and manipulating I had to do, I feel quite sure that all added up, which would account for the slightly offputting toughness (or, if you wanted to give it a euphemism, al dente-ness) of the cakes. The flavorful omnipresence of the green onions makes that chewiness all the more bearable… Still, I don’t think this is a recipe I’ll try until I’ve perfected my kneading skills at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris or the Culinary Institute of America in NYC. It’ll happen. I just have to get a degree from college first.

As you can see, this pancake has got a charmingly homemade look to it, so if you’re not a fan of the here-and-there burned spots that you get with this kind of cooking, I’m afraid you won’t like this, my first batch. As I say, come back in four or five years and we’ll try again (and, of course, I’m sure I’ll be practicing in the meantime). For now, I have to grapple with my kneading deficiency, which, in addition to my lack of rolling pin, manifests itself in the additional problem of inconsistent thickness. Whereas ideally I’d have rolled the cakes to even, perfect circles and dropped them nicely into the pan, I was forced to use the pads of my fingers to delicately flatten the bits of dough… and as soon as I picked them up to put into the pan, their stickiness made them tear apart into greasy green-flecked wads in my hand. (Mmmm… appetizing.) So yes, I could do only a cursory flattening in my palm before I dropped them into the hot pan and flattened them as best I could with my spatula. Unprofessional, yes. Tonight was just not my night for beginner’s luck.