A perfect day in Harare

My family's special day when we were all together and when there was some degree of peace - a ceasefire at least - was Sunday.  In my mind Sunday is inextricably linked with pancakes or what some call crepes.

It started with a tray of tea to be provided in bed at about 7am (my chore) and I would put on some bit of Handel, Haydn or Vivaldi that my mum liked.  My brothers and I lay around reading the newspaper and drinking our tea in the main bedroom with Mum and Dad.  Peter would be scanning the classifieds for the next motorbike to buy, fix and sell and Lexy would be lying across the foot of the bed telling mum what an amazing cook Mrs Shelton was or what a fantastic garden Mrs Betts kept.  Eventually the music had to be quelled so that we could get out Dad's Sony world receiver radio, attach the aerial spool to the window and listen to the pips from the BBC World service. There was that wonderful tune which is etched into my mind and the clear voices beamed out over many thousands of miles from a cold and dark yet brilliant beacon of civilisation. We, immersed in all the troubles of Zimbabwe, were warmed up just by the knowledge that it was out there. Letter from America by Alistair Cook was my favorite show.

Stress and a bit of minor shouting ensued in the rush for the Catholics of the family to be off to Nazareth House with all the other Irish immigrants to listen to the entertaining and clever sermons of Father ?  I think that the real purpose of going, though, was for the 1/2 hour of chatting afterwards in the sun outside.  Now that I think about going to church for the first time in years I realise how much I enjoyed having an excuse to sing. Religion has been washed out of me leaving only the tiniest germ of unjustified hope but the music is still there.

The real business really began when we got home.

Item number 1 was for my father (who usually moaned a lot about "noise" when anyone else played anything) to put on the 1812 Overture by Tschaikovsky.  This is all about Napoleon being defeated by the Russians.  It has a feeling of marvelous happiness at the ending of a great fear particularly when the bells begin to ring at the end.  I  would sit looking at a print of The Officer of the Imperial Guard by Géricault and imagine being in Napoelon's Grande Armeé and how terrible and impressive, proud and bitter it must have been. Thanks to Dad I know much more than I want to know about Napoleon and "The War Between the States" and General Lee and so on but in some ways it was interesting.

Item number 2 was to start cooking pancakes.  There is a lot of confusion, internationally, about that word. Americans like fat pancakes which to me seem like big Scottish drop scones. Ours were the English version - similar to French crepes but cooked in a frying pan without the aid of those T-shaped sticks the French use for spreading out their mixture.   The batter had been made the night before and all that remained was to whip cream, make coffee, quarter a few lemons, put soft brown sugar into bowls, warm the plates, lay the table outside and cook 30 pancakes.

There was simply nothing better in the whole world.  I have forgotten all but a faint echo of what it felt like.

Later on my brothers left our deeply beloved African home and I missed them in the way that one does - your heart goes a bit dead.  I left too eventually - since one thinks one has to survive - and we rarely were together again all at once.  Nowadays it only happens every year or two.  Mum passed away and some of our cooking went with her but keeping some of it alive reminds us of her.

I am going to describe how to make our style of pancakes here. They have simple ingredients - flour, sugar, eggs and milk - but it can sometimes be hard to get the desired result.  I have never come across a good recipe that will tell you how to work around all the pitfalls - my successes were very un-reproducible. It took a long time to learn how to get my mother's recipe to work with different equipment and heats and egg sizes and all those things that change when you travel far. What I am going to put down are the critical bits of information that took me about 10 years of gradual experimentation. It seems a bit meagre when it's down in words but it took a lot of effort to discover it and it truly will make the difference.   I don't want to surpass mum but maybe I have a little, I don't know - she was a busy person with less time to waste on minor issues than me.  If so then I hope she wouldn't mind my small triumph, and I hope that you, having read thus far, will enjoy the same pleasure that making pancakes has given me.

"These are not Pancakes?!"

Well, these are mine at least :-). They are thin, discs about the size of a medium plate, made of wheat flour and are usually filled and rolled up before eating.  They differ from the pancakes that Americans and others might be familiar with in that they are much thinner, usually larger and are not "risen" (fluffy).  They can filled  with almost anything you can think of (sweet or savory).  They are light, soft and strong and good ones are slightly elastic.

The ones I describe here are not exactly like what you'd get in France - I know that now that I have seen!    I actually think they're thinner and more elegant and if I offend any French people out there then it's just too bad.  They don't require a pancake griddle or one of those rakes which are used to spread the mixture.  An ordinary frying pan will do although having a thick base and sloping sides helps.

They may be eaten like a dessert or used in savory recipes like lasagna sheets to make something similar to canneloni (delicious) or in any way you can think of.  I prefer them with dark brown sugar and lemon juice inside and whipped cream on top - somehow this seems unbeatable to me but YMMV and maple syrup, honey or a very sweet orange sauce (crepes suzette) are also good.

What to Aim For

1. Making the thinnest possible pancakes from a thin-cream-like batter in a frying pan.
2. Concentrating on the consistency and elasticity of the batter and not being fixated on quantities of ingredients.
   1. It must flow over the pan quickly and easily to make a thin pancake so it must be very liquid.
   2. It must be very strong so that it will not break despite being thin.
   3. It must not stick when it cooks.
   4. If there are lumps (even small ones) the batter will not flow across the pan and spread out evenly.
3. Achieving a good flavor.

Ingredients

As I have said, the quantities of ingredients are not what one should concentrate on because there are too many ways to get a result that isn't quite right.  Eggs vary in size from country to country and flours behave differently.  It is still useful to have a rough guide to quantities for the sake of the shopping but do get a little extra of everything to be sure.   I am too lazy to make these things in small quantities so this will make "a lot."

• 5 large eggs - discard 1 egg yolk otherwise the flavor will be too "eggy"
• 300g strong flour (roughly 11 oz)
• 75g sugar (roughly 3 oz)
• 3 tablespoons of rum. (dark but I don't think it matters) or brandy but rum is best
• between 900ml and 1 litre of milk (somewhere just over 30 fluid oz)
• a dessertspoon of oil

The Consistency

1. Use strong flour - bread flour is best. It is very effective to make the mixture the night before and leave it because it tends to get thinner whilst remaining strong - the effect is quite noticeable.
2. Put everything but the milk into a bowl and mix with some kind of mixer - a liquidiser would be fine.
3. Add just enough milk to mix comfortably and add more as you mix till the batter is is nearly right but still a bit thick (like thick, pour-able cream) - this can be corrected the next day when one actually makes it (the batter thins overnight anyhow). This makes a lot of crepes and cooking them takes about 1 1/2 minutes each so be prepared to spend half an hour to make 20.
4. Sieve the mixture after making it - it's the best way to get rid of lumps - they interfere with the flow of batter across the pan during cooking.
5. Warm the mixture before cooking to the point where it does not feel cold to touch. If the mixture has been in the fridge or you have used cold milk and cold eggs then when it hits the pan it will tend to stick to it and trying to cook it will be a miserable experience.
6. The desired consistency is very similar to runny cream. It's hard to get it right and from one day to the next I use different amounts of milk depending on the eggs, etc. So just start out being a bit conservative and make a couple of crepes and then add a bit more milk and try again. When you start making crepes that stick, wipe out the pan so it's smooth and oil it. Then mix up some flour with a cup of the now-too-thin mixture and then sieve that back in to thicken the batter. Next time you'll not push it too far.

The Setup

1. Get a pan that you can twist and turn easily with one hand when you are spreading the mixture - speed is important at this stage and you'll get tired with a heavy iron pan.
2. Make sure that the pan has shallow sloping sides - 90 degree angles make it impossible to get the crepe out.
3. I like non-stick pans best - with a thick base if possible.
4. Before you begin to cook, heat up the pan with some oil till it is just about to smoke and then wipe out the oil carelessly (i.e. don't try to scrub it all out) with a paper towel. With metal pans this is essential and I think it's worthwhile with non-stick ones too. Your first 2 crepes will be a bit oily but after that all will be well.
5. Cook on a fairly high heat - it tends to make nicer crepes.

The Technique

This is almost too hard to explain and I haven't perfected it yet. Practice will make you better. Try to use the minimum amount of mixture - one will often end up with a few holes but this is more than compensated for by the wonderful texture of a soft thin crepe.

1. Put the mixture into top right of the pan, tilt to make it run to the lower left, allow a "wide" puddle to form on the bottom left and then tilt the pan back to make the mixture run back across to the lower right - basically a kind of triangle.
2. If you think of a better method, please let me know.
3. The crepe is ready to turn when the surface looks matte (i.e. not glistening with moisture any more) and the edges are brown. Cook briefly on the other side.
4. Stir the mixture occasionally because flour tends to fall to the bottom of the bowl leaving the top part too thin and causing your last crepes to be too thick.

Troubleshooting

1. Brittle pancakes: add an egg to the mixture.
2. Sticking pancakes with thin mixture: these never dry out properly and tend to stick to the pan whilst being raw on top. There is not enough flour in the mixture.
3. Sticking pancakes with cold mixture: Naughty! make sure the mixture isn't cold!

Taste

1. Use less yolks than egg whites - otherwise they will taste too "eggy".
2. A bit of brandy or rum added to the mixture will make the crepes considerably better. A lot of rum will make them taste even better than that.
3. Waste no time with butter - it can add flavor but it's just annoying because it tends to burn and if you keep your mixture overnight it will solidify and come out of the mixture. Just add a small amount of cooking oil to the batter to help prevent it from sticking.

That's it - 10 years of experimentation summed up!  Good luck and may you have many happy Sundays and may your children remember them with love.

[ This was written quite a long time ago and I do now have my own daughter, named Gilly after my mum, and she tells me she loves them. Since then I have developed a couple of other recipes which give different results. I can make very fluffy pancakes but I can also make a much easier version than the one specified above but it just ens up slightly thicker. The recipe above is still the pinnacle for me - the best, la pièce de résistance. ]