It’s time to grease the pancake pan – this year, try making them with buckwheat flour
WE HAVE IT all next week: Ash Wednesday, Mardi Gras (or the rather more literal Fat Tuesday). We may now opt to call it Shrove Tuesday, or Pancake Day, but historically it all amounted to the same thing – a last blast of rich indulgence prior to the fasting of Lent.
I am full of admiration for those who abstain over the next grim weeks of cannot-decide weather, as we inch towards Easter. Historically, however, the emphasis was less on giving up rich foods and more on plain eating. For some this meant no meat, for others no foods including dairy or eggs, but for many the idea was to use less and combine it with plainer ingredients.
The idea is an interesting one given the need to create, invent, change – an approach to eating which has become so ingrained in our psyche. We now eat rich food constantly. Giving up chocolate is one thing, for many of us eating no meat is quite another. Yet the notion of plainer food is even more challenging.
We are going through challenging times, and a great deal of what we have come to expect as a given is no longer true. As with the economy, so too with food. While sales of mince and stewing beef shoot up, we still seem intent on a protein-rich diet that has all the hallmarks of excess. More vegetables, more cereals, more pulses offer an alternative.
Buckwheat is not an everyday ingredient but it turns up in pancakes (blinis), pasta (most successfully in a dish called pizzoccheri) and in the form of soba noodles in Japan. Pizzoccheri combines buckwheat pasta (soba noodles make a good approximation) with cabbage and potatoes, sage and butter, the whole assembly topped with lashings of taleggio or fontina cheese and a generous sprinkling of Parmesan. Not exactly frugal food you might say, but the humble earthiness is deliciously fitting for anyone not entirely convinced of the merits of total abstinence.
Buckwheat flour is grey in colour, with a gritty, flecked appearance – which is not surprising, given its earthy flavour. Despite being a grain, it is part of the rhubarb and sorrel family and is unusual in growing quite quickly in poor soil and even in unfavourable situations can produce two and even three crops in a growing season. No wonder it found favour in Japan where land is scarce and in the mountains often poor.
Although never hugely popular, buckwheat did spread to most of western Europe from the 15th century onwards. I have failed to discover any references to it in Ireland. It has regained some popularity in recent times in part because it contains rutin, which is supposed to be beneficial to those with high blood pressure.
You can make a buckwheat porridge using whole grains which in eastern Europe is called kasha. Sweet or savoury, it is a warming and comforting dish not unlike our own porridge. But it really is pancakes that make buckwheat a joy to use, and why I would advocate a little experimentation next Tuesday.
Delicious as your standard pancake is – consider fresh fruit and lashings of maple syrup as well as crispy bacon – there is something slightly non-event about the flour, milk and eggs combo. Cosseting and comforting certainly, but not exactly brimming with favour.
A buckwheat pancake, by contrast, has plenty of earthy attitude. It is a fine base to which you can add richer ingredients such as sausages and eggs, cheese, and even smoked fish. Go on, make Pancake Day a little different. Buckwheat flour is available in health food stores.