Whole Wheat Strawberry Pancakes and the Spiciest Fried Rice in History

On Saturday, Santana actually let us sleep in a little bit (after she went outside and got breakfast by 7, of course!), so instead of having breakfast, we had a mid-morning brunch-type meal that ultimately messed up our entire eating schedule for the day and resulted in a super-late dinner!

Another healthy thing to mention first: Emily at the health nut has a great Green Tote giveaway going on through Friday!  I like to think healthy and green when I can, even though our lifestyle might be a bit indulgent at times…great healthy blogs give me lots of ideas about how to incorporate more and more healthiness without even thinking about it!

We had gotten a gorgeous package of organic strawberries (not local, obviously, but still delish) through our CSA box on Thursday, so I chopped those up to make into pancakes! I am not always a huge fan of pancakes, because they are sometimes way too fluffy for me. I lean towards the super-thin crepes over the pumped-up fluffy pancakes. Matt loves pancakes though, and if I make them at home I can control the texture and usually enjoy them a lot.

I started with a recipe from Alton Brown’s I’m Just Here For More Food, which is the cookbook that follows I’m Just Here for the Food: Food + Heat = Cooking. The second book focuses on baked goods and for his pancakes he uses “The Muffin Method”. I love these books for the same reason I love watching Good Eats and anything Alton Brown really…he actually explains the science behind what’s going on with the food. Gives you a formula, a method for doing something and a few recipes that follow that formula.  Since you know the formula, you can change the recipe to suit your own desires! Sometimes it’s a little on the corny side and makes you want to roll your eyes, but at the end of the episode/page/rambling you understand why the meat turns brown, why the batter rises when you cook it, why you don’t want to use too much flour when you’re breading chicken. Plus, in I’m Just Here for the Food there are these awesome diagrams of a cow and a pig, outlining where all the cuts of meat come from…this makes me happier than I can describe. I use his books less often for the recipes, and more often for the techniques, tips, and general ability to understand what’s going on when I cook. I absolutely recommend them for anyone who wants to cook on a regular basis without recipes—after enough AB, you can do a lot of basic things without even thinking about it, because you know the science! Alton Brown is my geeky food crush…let’s just take a minute to come to terms with that.

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Ok, enough of that…here’s the recipe, with pictures of my oddly shaped pancakes along the way.

Alton Brown had 2 recipes: Buttermilk and Whole Wheat Pancakes.  I added the strawberries because we had them, and I went with the whole wheat because we had whole wheat flour in the cupboard and it’s just tasty!

What you need:

1. Whole Wheat Flour (2 cups)
2. Baking Powder (1 tsp)
3. Baking Soda (1/2 tsp)
4. Salt (1tsp)
5. Sugar (3 Tb)
6. Eggs (2 large)
7. Buttermilk (2 cups at room temperature) **I didn’t have buttermilk so I used regular milk with a couple tablespoons of lemon juice added while it came to room temp**
8. Unsalted butter (4 Tb, melted and slightly cooled)
9. STRAWBERRIES! (I used a whole small container)

The Muffin Method, as described in the book, is pretty basic and easy.  The dry stuff (flour through sugar) get mixed together quickly, then the wet stuff gets mixed together separately (eggs through butter).  The wet goes into the dry and they get stirred together just until combined, not until smooth.  For The Muffin Method to work, you cannot overmix! Super important…Alton Brown puts it in big bold letters several times: DO NOT OVERMIX!  The Muffin Method creates a cross section that looks like, well…a muffin: different sized air pockets, creating an uneven and course, crumbly texture.  This is distinguished from a cake mixture (or “cake masquerading as a muffin—better known as a cupcake”), where air is creamed into the batter and creates even air pockets throughout and a more tender texture. Very different! Alton Brown says “Yes, Virginia, pancakes are muffins—flat, griddle-cooked muffins.”

Heat your pan or griddle to 350 degrees while you put everything together with The Muffin Method and let the batter rest for 5 minutes.  I added the strawberries after the batter set.  You can tell if the pan is hot enough if a sprinkle of water dances across the surface! A little bit of butter or a spray of cooking spray preps the pan and then you’re ready to ladle the pancakes out!

I think because of the strawberries, my pancakes refused to form a circle! So frustrating! So we had oddly-shaped breakfast. I’m really fine with that. If you compare the two pictures of the batter in the pan, you can see how much the batter puffs up while the first side cooks…that’s the muffin method at work!

When I make pancakes, the first one is always a dud that we use to test the flavor…does it need more sweet?  Maybe some cinnamon? What kind of toppings should we get ready for them? And we pick at this first one as we cook the rest.  You can tell the pancakes are ready to flip when bubbles break on the surface and you can see the edges drying out a bit.  Use a spatula to peek under and if the pancake is brown enough, flip as carefully as possible!  I usually make small pancakes so there is less risk of pancakes breaking in half during this flipping process. I tend to make a mess either way, so I went with huge pancakes this time.

We topped them with powdered sugar and froze a few extras to heat up in the toaster oven for breakfast later this week!

(these are our tiny plates, not our full-sized dinner plates…they weren’t THAT huge!)

Because we had a really late breakfast/early lunch, we were feeling snacky in the middle of the afternoon and splurged on some nachos, leaving us full until pretty late in the evening.  I usually don’t like to eat a late dinner because I get grumpier and grumpier as I get tired and hungry, so cooking is not a great option as the evening wears on. 

Our super-late dinner was a Thai Fried Rice recipe I found online. I’m not going to link to it because it was SUPER spicy. As I tweak it, I’ll try to post a better fried rice variation. Normally I just wing it with a blend of veggies, an egg, a little hoisin, chicken broth, and soy. Usually we have some leftover meat from earlier in the week that I throw in, or we make pot stickers for the side. I do the same variation with noodles every once in a while to make a lo mein type dish that is really really satisfying.

I was craving Thai Fried Rice, though. Our weekly Thai Tuesday location has been out of commission for quite a while because they’re remodeling the entire thing. This has led to lots of yummy International Tuesday adventures, but I like the reliability of our regular place. So I found this recipe and just went with it…I had less rice than the recipe called for, but a lot more veggies, so I figured it would even out.

I don’t have any pictures of this, because I was completely blown away by the spicy level. On a 1 to 5 star scale, this was at least a 7. As I was dishing it up, I got a little sauce on my finger and licked it off…I needed a glass of water just to cool down from that little bit! I managed to eat almost a whole bowl, and Matt liked it quite a bit. I tried it as leftovers with lunch today and put it over a green salad with a light ranch dressing…it helped a bit, but still SO spicy. My standard throw-everything-in-the-wok-without-a-recipe method is still my favorite, but as I play with Thai recipes, maybe another one will come out on top and I’ll provide some details if that ever happens!

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