I suggest you read how baked and ate pancakes in Russia.
HAS BEEN BAKED PANCAKES ...
Author S. Loginov
Here, damn it, I found something to write about - about pancakes! Damn thing is simple, seemingly accessible to everyone. Although you never know what it seems to anyone - in fact, baking a pancake is a great art. Someone will live his whole life, but he will not try a real pancake, in his darkness mistaking pancakes, pancakes, pancakes and other products of cook's thought for pancakes. Of course, pancakes are a wonderful thing, but this is not a pancake.
First of all, pancakes are baked from unleavened dough. Yeast dough is for pancakes; kefir, yogurt, whey - for pancakes, pancakes and pancakes. And of course, no soda, sodium bicarbonate will hopelessly change the taste and spoil the consistency. Everything in a pancake should be natural. Only then can pancakes be eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Chapter 1. BREAKFAST
So, we bake pancakes. Let's get up early in the morning, while everyone is still sleeping, and get started. First of all, you need to take flour. Flour for pancakes is wheat, first, and better - second grade (we will leave the highest grade for pies). And certainly not pancake. Pancake flour for lazy and inept. In addition, soda has already been added to it and, therefore, pancakes from pancake flour cannot be obtained by definition.
For each liter can of flour - a tablespoon of sugar and tea salt. Stirred, hammered in an egg. One egg for a pound of flour is quite enough, otherwise the pancakes will turn out to be too rich and begin to crumble right in the pan.
Then the most crucial moment in dough preparation begins. Little by little, pour milk into the flour, and then water. That's right - we do not pour flour into milk, but pour milk into flour! We knead a rather steep dough and, gradually adding liquid, bring it to the desired consistency. All this time, without ceasing, we mix the dough with a wooden spatula, whisk, steel fork or other handy tool. A spoon is not suitable for this business, it will begin to bend and will soon break.
The secret of this procedure is simple. While the dough is thick, lumps simply cannot form in it, because the whole mass is one large lump. The main thing here is not to plump all the liquid at once, because then it will not be possible to get rid of the lumps even with the help of a mixer. Women, for the most part, pour flour into milk, and as a result, they get anything, but not pancakes. And so, lumps, without having time to form, disperse without a trace in the dough, which differs very little from them in density.
A liter can of flour requires about half a liter of milk. When the milk runs out, we continue to top up the water until the dough is thin enough. It flows easily from a spoon, and there should be absolutely no lumps in it. Only such dough can be used to bake a truly thin pancake.
Last, add a little sunflower oil to the dough - a spoon or two, stir it goodbye and solemnly put the pan on the fire.
The frying pan is the pinnacle of human thought, and the fact that the quality of frying pans has been steadily deteriorating over the past hundred years proves that humanity, unfortunately, is degrading and soon the former homo sapiens will drop to all fours. The secret of making real frying pans was lost as a result of two world wars. As S. Mikhalkov once wrote: "If before the self-propelled guns were produced by another plant, today the frying pans were launched at full speed." The industry focused on the production of self-propelled guns, of course, could not establish the production of high-quality pans. Previously, excellent frying pans were made by the Zlatoust plant, and pans were poured from Kasli cast iron.At the beginning of the century, mirror cast iron went into production and a real frying pan was not available. In some places, families have preserved ancient frying pans, but these are the last of the Mohicans. So you have to bake on what is.
The pancake pan must be clean, so it must be at least slightly burned out beforehand. The pans are not washed, they are burned out. We heat the pan over high heat, so that a bluish smoke begins to rise, and then we put it under a stream of cold water. A column of steam rises, the frying pan screeches, but becomes clean. As a last resort, a hot frying pan can be cut through with a small amount of coarse salt, but it is better not to bring the most important kitchen tool to such a state that it cannot be cleaned without salt.
Lightly wipe the burnt pan with butter or lard. Since this procedure will have to be repeated every seven to eight pancakes, it is better to prepare for it in advance. The easiest way is to take a piece of pork fat and, pinning it on a fork, grease the pan with it. Some stick a small piece of raw potatoes onto a fork, pour some sunflower oil on a saucer and dip the potatoes into it before wiping the pan. And where pancakes are baked often, there is a special chicken feather duster. For some reason, the owners of such brooms prefer to use freshly melted butter. I didn't have a broom, I use a slice of bacon or sunflower oil on potatoes.
And so, the first portion of the dough falls into the hot pan. Do you think this is a pancake? - no matter how! The first pancake should be lumpy, so it's better not to make the first pancake at all. Instead, we bake several small pancakes the size of a five-kopeck coin. Several - this is according to the number of awakened family members. And since they are still asleep, only two pancakes are made - for themselves and for the dog, which is extremely interested in watching the kitchen manipulations.
- Well, what is missing?
The dog is delighted. She believes that it has turned out to be perfect and that only pancakes are missing. If someone from the human tribe woke up, then, having tasted a five-kopeck pancake, he makes his comments about the lack of salt and sugar. Of course, the chef knows better what and how much should be added to the dough, however, when I was little, they gave me a tiny pancake to try and listened to my unenlightened opinion, and now I do the same. Tradition is a great thing, and with regard to pancakes it is especially sacred.
The second portion of pancake patches confirms that now you can get down to baking pancakes in earnest. The frying pan is already on fire and is hot not to a squeal, but to a subtle hiss, that is, if you drop water on it, the drop does not spread over the hot surface, but runs over it like a mercury ball. However, if a squeal is heard at the same time, it means that the pan is overheated, and the fire should be slightly extinguished. Scoop the dough with a spoon and pour it onto the edge of the pan. I would like to take a large and wooden spoon, like a brother, but where can I get one in recent times, where is decay, and moth, and vexation of spirit? Found a plastic one - and okay.
When pancakes are baked, the entire plate belongs to the cook. On one burner - a frying pan, on two more switched off, a saucepan with dough and a flat dish for pancakes. Nearby is butter, melted, if we act with a feather duster, or just a piece that has softened from the heat of the kitchen.
So, we pour a portion of the dough onto the edge of the pan, raise the pan and make a smooth rotational movement in the air so that the dough spreads in a thin layer over the entire surface, but in no case crawls onto the side. A good frying pan weighs three kilograms, and this movement will have to be repeated at a brisk pace about a hundred times. Who now says that baking pancakes is a woman's business? Of course, in Russian villages there are women for whom juggling with a frying pan is not a burden, but still, nevertheless, nevertheless ...
In legends and commercials, it is narrated that an experienced chef turns a pancake, tossing it in a frying pan. No matter how much I tried, nothing like that worked for me. Once upon a time there was a wooden spatula with a beveled edge to turn pancakes at home, now I use a knife, although this is considered bad form. Draw two semi-ritual movements along the edge of the baking pancake, then when the shiny wet surface of the dough becomes dull, the knife is slipped under the pancake and in one step the thinnest and not yet properly baked product is thrown onto the other side. It seems that this is a little easier than turning a pancake over by tossing it in a frying pan.
There is a saying that, they say, the first pancake is lumpy. I don't know who invented it, but he didn't know how to bake pancakes. If the pan is properly burnt out, and then greased with a thin layer of bacon and warmed up to the proper degree, if test five-kopeck pancakes were baked on it, then the first full-fledged pancake turns out to be a real handsome man.
Look carefully at the ruddy surface of the baking pancake. Before you are all shades of golden, yellow, honey, light brown. Damn, completely flat to the touch, seems to be a map of a mysterious country, with its seas, continents, valleys and mountain ranges. For a long time I really thought that every pancake was a map of an unknown planet, until one day I happened to see a photograph of the Sun taken in infrared rays. Since then, I know that the ancestors were not mistaken when they named the wheat pancake the symbol of the sun!
From the point of view of chemistry, baking pancakes in the first approximation is a process of destruction of polysaccharides, as a result of which dextrin is formed. A beautiful, crunchy word. Dextrin is a crust, broken off from a still warm loaf, frying potatoes curling in fat, gradual goldenness of soaked peas fried in oil, airy crunchiness of imported chips. Frying is the art of making delicious dextrin, even meat and fish are often breaded or dusted in flour before being thrown into the pan.
The main thing is that the destruction does not reach carbon and resinous substances. The phrase "burnt pancake" is considered a curse for a reason. But under-baked dough doesn't hurt either. It sticks to the teeth and lumps in the stomach, causing heartburn and bad mood. To avoid the sad development of events, we will use a simple test (it's not for nothing that the words "test" and "dough" are one-root!). With three fingers, touch the surface of the pancake and make a lightning-fast twisting motion. An unfinished pancake will turn ninety degrees, a ready pancake will make a full turn, or even in imitation of Zhuzhe Almasi will make a jump of two and a half turns. Immediately, we throw it onto a plate waiting nearby and pour a new portion of dough into the pan, making sure that it does not fall on the side, otherwise the edge of our sun will be distorted by an absurd protuberance.
While the new pancake is baking, we have a couple of seconds to grease the first pancake with butter and at the same time look at it from the other side. It would seem that here is the same dextrin, obtained in the same pan from the same dough, but the pattern on the wrong side of the pancake is of a completely different type than on the front one. What it is - I do not know, it must be that no one has yet photographed our sun in this way, or this photo has not yet fallen into the hands of a pancake lover.
Then the cook works as if on a conveyor belt, one pancake after another lies on the dish and is quickly greased with butter. The pancake stack grows slowly and steadily, like the Tower of Babel. Awakened by the pancake spirit, homemakers appear in the kitchen, everyone expresses joy at the sight of baked pancakes, and everyone has a job.
- Put it on the table! - you throw shortly without looking up from the plate.
Gathering on the table is truly a woman's business, because today the family will not have breakfast in the kitchen, but, as if on holidays, in a room on a white tablecloth.From the sideboard, the ceremonial service and crystal rosettes for jam, porcelain gravy boats and milk jugs should be removed.
- In this one - sour cream, - you command, throwing a quick glance at the pulled out dishes, and in this one - sour cream with garlic and salt ... yes, so much garlic is just right.
Involuntarily, I recall the movie "Three Fat Men" and the rushing crowd of cooks.
- There in the locker, get the syringe ... which means: why? - it is necessary! No, there will be no cream ...
The cook also has to make room - a kettle is placed on the only free burner. In a large teapot, tea is infused - English with bergamot and orange blossom petals, or domestic - Krasnodar, to which lemon balm and currant buds are mixed in advance.
The last dough residues are scraped into the pan. They are no longer enough for a whole pancake, rivulets of dough are fried with a fancy grill and lay on top of a pancake stack like an exquisite decoration.
The finishing touches to the preparation for the feast, and a stack of queen-high hot pancakes appears in the dining room.
-- Dinner is served! - no provincial artist can say that.
Chapter 2. OUR ANCESTORS WERE NOT SOON
It seems that in Russian literature everything is told as it is about eating pancakes; which of the writers caught a Russian man chewing, he remembered the pancake. Aleksandr Ivanovich Kuprin said most beautifully about this occupation: "She eats pancakes hot as fire, eats with butter, with sour cream, with granular caviar, with pressed caviar, with napkin, with Achuyevskaya, with chum salmon, with catfish, with herring of all sorts, with sprats, sprats, sardines, salmon and whitefish, sturgeon balych and white fish, with meatball and sturgeon milk, smoked sterlet, and the famous smelt from Bela Ozero.
How does it feel? But this is a small fraction of Russian dishes, which are eaten with pancakes. Salted mushrooms (it seems that Gilyarovsky mentioned them) and, in general, all the mushroom, endless variety of sweet table, among which pancakes with molasses are traditionally remembered. And what about pancakes with golden fried onions or radish baked in honey? ..
However, no, I will shut up ... you never know what can be found in the literature, but in our present squalor there is not enough wealth for granular caviar. What can we say about napkin caviar, which, according to rumors, can be cut with a knife like cheese. What was found in the refrigerator and pantry is what will be discussed. And we will leave halibut or sevruga teshka for fantasy novels.
What is on our Sunday festive table? First of all, this is pate. It is not customary to eat meat on Shrovetide, and without that Pushkin called Shrovetide fat, but a Russian person eats pancakes all year round and with all sorts of snacks, without exception. So you can buy a tube of North American pate with the image of an evil aunt in advance, although it is much tastier to make the pate yourself.
Usually, the pate is prepared in the evening, since in the morning, as we have seen, there will be no time to do it. Take a kilogram of beef liver, cut into wide thin pieces and fry in a mixture of lard and sunflower oil. Boil a kilogram of carrots. Peel a pound of onions, and if you are a fan of fried onions, then fry them in the same mixture. We take garlic to taste. And then we pass all this through a meat grinder. Add salt, black pepper, all kinds of spices with a generous hand. And the bay leaf is so nice to drive through the meat grinder together with the liver. Mix the pate well and season with softened butter. The amount of butter varies from one to five packs, and some put more, although this is no longer a paste, but liver oil. We knead again, put the bowl in the refrigerator, and in the morning, before starting to bake pancakes, we take out so that the pate has time to soften and squeeze out of the cream syringe with ease.
Now the pate in the Boehm glass salad bowl takes pride of place next to the pancakes. And the syringe, already filled, is waiting for the impatient hand to press the plunger.
It was not for nothing that Kuprin remembered the intricately combined bookmarks, in these combinations the very gusto is hidden. The pate is combined with sour cream sauce (sour cream, salt, crushed garlic, black pepper) or horseradish, which is also diluted with sour cream in advance. All this was prepared by the cooks, while the master was spellbound over the frying pan. For horseradish, I have a special beautiful little pot at home, called the not very euphonious word "horseradish".
These are, so to speak, indispensable ingredients. And if it really happens on Shrovetide, that is, when smelt is walking along the Neva, then there may easily be some tiny smelt caviar in the house. Just when gutting the smelt, put aside the tiny caviar bags, and if the caviar is at least half of the mayonnaise jar, then do not fry it, but salt it. A few drops of lemon juice, a little salt, then stir the caviar with a teaspoon and, if possible, choose a film. Such a product will not be stored for a long time, but it will stand easily for a couple of days in anticipation of Sunday pancakes. Yes, this, of course, is not Achuev caviar, but what to do if I have never seen Achuev caviar in my life and I don’t even know what it is.
Hot smoked fish, which should be broken into small pieces, and overseas eggplant caviar can fit on the table. Everything is delicious with pancakes.
However, stop talking, the pancakes get cold!
Everyone sat down at the table, everyone stretches out his hand and takes a pastern of pancakes. And here you should stop and tell how you should eat pancakes.
This question, in view of its apparent clarity, is completely bypassed in the literature, but a pancake is not just food, but a ceremonial dish, and the culture of eating pancakes goes back many millennia. A round pancake made from unleavened dough is much older than bread; it was baked on a smooth stone embedded in the hearth of a prehistoric man. This is a sacred product, a symbol of the sun and a satisfying, successful life. It is a great sin to cut a pancake with a knife or pierce it with a fork; it means to injure the sun, to doom the whole people to hunger and disease. “Damn it’s not a sheaf - you won’t stick on a pitchfork,” says the proverb. A hundred years ago, a person who decided to cut a pancake risked that he would be beaten with stakes on the spot. And rightly so, do not wish trouble for your neighbor. Today morals have softened, but still the immutable law says: PANCAKES EAT ONLY WITH HANDS! "So that you get carried up to your elbows, and eat up to your throat," - so it is said about pancakes. There are teaspoons on the table for all sorts of arrivals, and knives and forks are left in the kitchen. They don't belong here today.
You can do the rest with pancakes. Fold, twist, tear, dividing the last pancake into two. The only requirement: all this must be done by hand. Of course, I am an inveterate atheist, the sacred meaning of the pancake is lost for me, but there must be respect for tradition.
Let's start eating. Put the pate across the pancake with a narrow strip (this is where the cream syringe came in handy!), Pour sour cream sauce on top, bend the pancake in half and roll it into a tube. With three fingers we lift the rolled pancake, slightly bending it like a boomerang so that the abundantly poured sour cream does not drip from the ends. We bring it to our mouth ... no, I can’t write any further, I’ll go to the kitchen, eat something ...
The second pancake, the third, the fifth ... With smoked meat, vinaigrette, with mushroom caviar, with eggplant, zucchini, pumpkin ... If Kuprin did not list everything, then I am even more beyond my strength. And sour cream, sour cream, sour cream. A liter can of sour cream will be halved today at breakfast.
Damn-n! .. damn-n! .. damn-n! - hot blood hums in the temples.
We postpone the first change, take more pancakes and reach for sweets. A quick blueberry jam, a jar of which was specially opened for such an occasion, and sour cream on top, this time pure, without garlic and horseradish. Flowing amber of honey - and sour cream again ... And tea - freshly brewed, hot, fragrant. Of course, without sugar - what kind of sugar when there are so many sweets on the table?
One after another, the household falls off the table, plunging into blissful languor. Digestion of food is somewhat akin to nirvana.
Phew! ..I can't take it anymore either. No mayor will come up ... Well, perhaps the very last pancake, with condensed milk and grated chocolate.
Apparently, you won't have to dine today.
(see the continuation of "HAS BEEN BAKED PANCAKES" Part 2)
