Thursday, August 20, 2015

Currant Cottage Cheese Pancakes

Blueberry pancakes are an iconic breakfast staple, sacred Americana, hazy dream of cold cereal eaters everywhere. But blueberries bleed into tart, black puddles. They sog out pancakes that you were very careful to fluff. And they don’t go all that well with maple.

Deborah Madison, who’s best known for her vegetarian cookbooks, came up with a better idea in The Savory Way, her book dedicated to better home cooking with readily available staples. Tiny dried currants, when plumped up first in hot water (or something stronger) and added generously to a batter, do very good things for a pancake. They thread and disperse seamlessly into the cakes, adding moisture and subtle winey sweetness without spilling out of their skins and flooding the crumb like a sloppy-drunk blueberry would. (For the solution to sloppy-drunk blueberry pie.)
Cottage cheese and sour cream give the pancakes even more delicate buoyancy. (Even if you don’t understand cottage cheese as a snack, you will understand it in pancake form.) Madison suggests serving with powdered sugar and lemon, but a good smear of salted butter is another fitting option.

Makes about 20 (3-inch/7.5cm) pancakes
1 cup (145g) dried currants or raisins
1 cup (225g) cottage cheese, dry-curd if possible
1 cup (230g) sour cream, plus more to serve
5 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
Several gratings of nutmeg
1 tablespoon sugar
1 cup (125g) unbleached all-purpose flour
1½ teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
Butter, for frying
Confectioners’ sugar and lemon, for serving (optional)

1 Unless the currants are soft, cover them with very hot water and set them aside to plump while you make the batter.

2 Whisk the cottage cheese and sour cream together; then beat in the eggs, one at a time. Stir in the vanilla, lemon zest, nutmeg, and sugar; then add the flour, baking powder, and salt. Stir gently to combine without overmixing

3 Melt a tablespoon of butter in a wide frying pan and, when it’s hot, drop in the batter by the spoonful. Cook over medium heat until browned on the bottom, then flip once and cook until lightly colored on the other side.

4 Serve the pancakes with confectioners’ sugar and a wedge of lemon, plus extra sour cream if desired.
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