Saturday afternoon in the kitchen

Those of you who have been following me on Facebook or on GTalk know that I've spent the last couple of days converting music written in neumes to modern notation. I'm nearly done with that task, but decided to take a break from all that by puttering 'round in the kitchen.

I had some left-over buttermilk that needed to be used, so I thought of making buttermilk pancakes. Since I had some quickly ripening bananas, I decided to include that in the mix.

So here is the recipe I used:

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tbsp sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
2 cups buttermilk
4 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 bananas, ripe

Sift together into a bowl the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

Beat the eggs until frothy. Add the buttermilk, melted butter, and vanilla extract and mix well.

Add the dry ingredients and mix until combined.

Cut the bananas into slices and drop in the batter. Fold the bananas into the batter.

Cook on a lightly greased griddle (I used cooking spray on the surface): pour the batter by 1/4 cup increments. If you want bigger pancakes, increase the amount of batter (1/3 - 1/2 cupfuls).

This recipe made 22 pancakes when 1/4 c batter was cooked on the griddle.

Serve warm with butter, jam, honey, or if you want something more savoury, eggs, bacon, ham, spam, etc.

And just for Arlyn: my Espasol recipe. The secret to successful espasol: you need to toast the malagkit (sweet rice) flour. Most recipes will tell you to roast the malagkit (sweet rice) and then grind it. Why grind when you can easily buy it already ground? I've generally used Mochiko flour, and if you can get the one produced by Koda Farms, that's even better.

Espasol

4 c malagkit flour
1 ½ c sugar
3 c coconut milk
1 tsp vanilla
Pinch of salt

Roast the malagkit flour in an ungreased pan until the flour appears very lightly tan. (I've always been told if it's the colour of my skin, it's too dark.)

Set aside 1 c malagkit flour for later use. Combine the remaining 3 cups of roasted flour with the rest of the ingredients. It's going to be a bit sticky when everything is incorporated.

On a surface dusted with the malagkit flour, roll out the dough until it's around 1/4 - 1/2" thickness. With a cutter (I've generally used a diamond-shaped cutter), cut out the shapes, roll in the flour you set aside and place in a container.

Serve at room temperature.

Guaranteed - if you serve this to a group of Filipinos, especially in a place where these things are not easily bought, they will disappear faster than you can say "boo".

Enjoy! :)

Edited to add:

Oops. I knew I forgot something. My recipe only had the ingredients list, and I had to remember how to put it together.

What I was missing: combine the sugar and coconut milk in a pan. Whilst stirring, bring to a boil over medium heat, and then lower the flame to a simmer. Add the vanilla and the salt.

To this you add the toasted malagkit flour, and keep stirring. Don't burn the mixture, but keep going until it's relatively dry. It should become a pliant material that you can put on a flour board and roll.

After I posted this, I remembered my mum having this sticky mixture in a pot that she was pouring out onto a floured board and realised that I missed this one crucial step.

Enjoy! :)