Pancakes!
Hello everyone! Let me introduce myself - my name is Kate and I’m a new member of the English Language team here at BBC Learning English. I’m really enjoying my work here so far and luckily I arrived just in time for the launch of the new improved site! What do you all think of it? We’ve had some very positive comments from you so far, so do remember to keep them coming….
For my first blog I thought I’d write about ‘Pancake Day’ or as it’s also called ‘Shrove Tuesday’. Earlier this week lots of people in Britain celebrated the day by cooking, eating and tossing pancakes.
A traditional English pancake is made from mixture of flour, milk and eggs. A small amount of batter is fried in a frying pan to make very thin flat cakes which are then served and eaten immediately.You can eat pancakes with a variety of toppings but my favourite is simply lemon juice and sugar. Delicious!
Do you have pancakes in your country? What toppings or fillings are your favourite?
Pancake Day takes place on the Tuesday before Lent, which is the period of 40 days leading up to the Christian festival, Easter Sunday. You may know that Lent is a time of abstinence, or giving things up, so traditionally Shrove Tuesday was the last chance to indulge yourself by eating up all the rich food that was in the cupboard.
Are you giving up anything for Lent? Often people give up doing particular things they enjoy for example eating chocolate or drinking coffee.
Today, lots of people celebrate Pancake Day regardless of their religion or whether they observe Lent. Maybe it’s because pancakes are so delicious and fun to make.
Why not have a go? They’re very easy….here’s the recipe:
Ingredients
100g (4oz) plain flour
1 egg
300ml (1/2 pint) milk
optional pinch of salt
oil for frying
To serve:
caster sugar
lemon juice
lemon wedges
To make the pancake batter, sift the flour and salt into a bowl. Add the egg and beat well. Then add the milk gradually and beat to make a smooth batter.
Heat a little oil in a large frying pan until hot and then pour enough batter to thinly coat the base of the pan.
Cook for a couple of minutes on each side.
Serve immediately while it is still piping hot. You can sprinkle it with sugar and lemon juice or alternatively drizzle with honey or jam. Or you could just eat it on its own…..yummy!
Part of the fun of making pancakes is tossing them or flipping them over. If you’re good at it you can toss them high up into the air above you and they will fall in one piece on the side you want them to. (If you’re not so skilled though, they could end up on the ceiling or the walls so watch out!)
Why not have a go when you try out the recipe?
Here are some pictures of people tossing pancakes...
..and here's Carrie having a go..
...don't worry, she caught it again!
As well as cooking and eating pancakes, many people also take part in pancake races which are held all over Britain. The object of the race is to get to the finishing line first while flipping a pancake in a frying pan at the same time.
According to tradition, in the year 1445 a woman heard the shriving bell while she was making pancakes and ran to the church in her apron, still clutching her frying pan. This is where the idea for the pancake race is supposed to have originated from. Now I think about it, this seems like a very strange tradition indeed!
Another bizarre tradition involving food which springs to mind is the 'Tomatina', the world's largest tomato fight which takes place in the Valencia region of Spain. Every year, thousands of people throw more than 240,000 pounds of tomatoes at eachother. Very messy!
It is thought this tradition began in 1945 when a fight started among two young members of a carnival crowd. A vegetable stall was nearby in the town square and everyone started throwing tomatoes at each other. I wonder if this is true...?
Do you have any food-related traditional days in your country? We'd love to hear about them and the stories behind how they started - the stranger the better!
Looking forward to hearing from you all.
Bye for now!
Kate
tossing a pancake: to quickly lift the frying pan in which a pancake is cooking so that the pancake goes up into the air and turns over
batter: mixture of flour, milk and eggs
toppings: types of food that go on top of other food (eg. pizza) to give extra flavour
fillings: types of food that go inside other food (eg. a sandwich or cake) to give it extra flavour
Lent: (in the Christian religion), the 40 days before Easter, a period during which some people stop doing particular things that they enjoy:
abstinence: to not do something
giving things up: to stop a habit such as smoking, drinking alcohol or eating chocolate.
indulge: to allow yourself to do something enjoyable
pinch of salt: a small amount of salt
lemon wedges: thick slices of lemon
piping hot: very hot
sprinkle: to scatter a small amount on the surface of something
drizzle: to pour slowly
flipping them over: to turn quickly
watch out!: be careful
Shriving bell: a bell which was originally rung on Shrove-Tuesday. Many housewives used it as a signal for putting the pancakes into the frying pan.
clutching: to hold something tightly
springs to mind: comes into my head
Comments
Hello Kate How are you? It's always fun to heard about differents traditions,the idea of race with a frying pan sounds very funny!! In spite of I'm spanish I have never been in "la tomatina" but I knew it, because is every year on tv.Here in my area (south Andalucia) there's nothing similar that comes to my mind. Apart from this,I love pancakes as a breakfast but I've never made them,maybe I'll try with you recipe. Bye!!
Nice to meet you Kate! I do love pancakes. My favourite one is filling with minced meat and topping with mozzarella and tomato sauce.Yummy :-)! On Ash Wednesday we usually eat cod fish with baked potatoes dipping into olive oil and during all the Lent my family don´t eat meat. Anyway, I´ll try your pancanke recipe soon, I just don´t know if I´ll be as good as Carrie in catching the pancakes ( ooh congrats Carrie, I guess you had lots of :-practicing)). Best wishes, Ana Paula.
Nice to meet you Kate! I do love pancakes. My favourite one is filling with minced meat and topping with mozzarella and tomato sauce.Yummy :-)! On Ash Wednesday we usually eat cod fish with baked potatoes dipping into olive oil and during all the Lent my family don´t eat meat. Anyway, I´ll try your pancanke recipe soon, I just don´t know if I´ll be as good as Carrie in catching the pancakes ( ooh congrats Carrie, I guess you had lots of :-practicing)). Best wishes, Ana Paula.
Hello Kate and welcome! It's your first blog post and you have come up with something to tickle our taste buds. Talking of traditions related with food, what I have seen most here are yearly mango festivals where you can dig in all types of mango varieties and everything served at the stalls is made from mangoes.It includes ice-creams, shakes, salads and yoghurts and you name it and they have it for you. Carrie seems to be very skilled at tossing pancakes. Best wishes, Naheed
Hi Kate! Nice to meet you. Your blog has Carrie's style so I liked it very much. I also like the idea of the Pancake Day. I'll put it into practice. I prepare tasteful pancakes and I must admit that I also manage to toss them. In Argentina we eat different types of them. My favourite is with orange. It's called Crepe Sussette. It's made of orange juice, orange wedges,sugar and the liquor "Grand Marnier". Have you tried them. They are very famous over here and really delicious. However, I'm against the idea of trhowing tomatoes or other food. I think that it's a shame to do that while a lot of people are suffering from starving. The pictures are amazing and Carrie seems to be an expert! Have a nice day. Best wishes, Cris
Hi Kate! Nice to meet you! How interesting, we do not celebrate Pancake Day so much here and not really at all in my family. Pancakes… yummy, yummy! We also prepare small, very thin pancake, so-called French or European pancake. It is absolutely different from the pancake that people prepare in the U.S. The list of ingredients includes: eggs, flour, milk, fizzy mineral water, sugar, pinch of salt, oil and a little rum. Pancakes are never eaten for breakfast in Slovakia. We eat them as a dessert or sweet treat, served with a large amount of filling such as jam, whipped cream, chocolate or vanilla sauce, fruit and so on. I have never tried pancakes with sugar and lemon juice. However, my daughter, who has lived in England for 4 years, recommended trying it. She said it was delicious. I think I should give it a try. I usually flip them over but Carrie seems to be very good at tossing them. Congrats! Take care,
Hi Kate! It’s great to meet you and thanks for the tasty entry. I was drooling and slobbering over your scrumptious and done to a turn pancake while I was reading it. I make pancake for my son a couple of days in a week. He seriously loves my pancake and spreads honey on it when he tucks in. My favourite toppings are one scoop of Vanilla ice cream and plenty syrup. I don’t know why, but I have to sing a song like ‘you are so scrumptious…’ whenever gulp it down. By the way, it would be very grateful if you tell me which a verb I should use for the sentence - drool or slobber. Thanks in advance.
Hi Kate! It’s great to meet you and thanks for the tasty entry. I was drooling and slobbering over your scrumptious and done to a turn pancake while I was reading it. I make pancake for my son a couple of days in a week. He seriously loves my pancake and spreads honey on it when he tucks in. My favourite toppings are one scoop of Vanilla ice cream and plenty syrup. I don’t know why, but I have to sing a song like ‘you are so scrumptious…’ whenever gulp it down. By the way, it would be very grateful if you tell me which a verb I should use for the sentence - drool or slobber. Thanks in advance.
In my country we have whole 'Pancake week' before Lent. There is a variety of fillings: curds, meat, fruits, mushrooms and caviar for rich gourments :) Of course every woman has her own secret of tasty pancakes. Your photos show that making pancakes is very funny and interesting process :)
I love pancakes and I thought this Britain tradition very curious. When I was a child I used to see pancakes in cartoons while I was watching TV. Fortunately, I am still learning from pancakes.
Hello Kate. Here where I live, since many moons ago, the Catholic church has been preaching abstinence from meat during the Lent from Ash Wednesday to the Easter. For Easter, we use to cook a delicious dish called "Torta Capixaba" or Capixaba Pie. If the recipe wasn't so long I could write here for you but you can read it in the Sept 2007 student blog in which I had the honour to be a blogger. Your recipe seems to be delicious. Pancakes are not common here at least in my family. The only time that springs to mind is once my mother made one for me and siblings. The recipe was similar to Ana Paula's recipe and it was served at lunch. I'm happy to see Cristina's comment and that I'm not alone in thinking as disgusting the fact of people throwing away food while there are so many chldren dieing from hunger in the world. Sorry for my sincerity, I respect all traditions but it's painful to see that. Your tradition, though, seems to be very healthy and I'll have a go flipping a pancake over like Carrie some day. I don't think I'll be so skilled like her. I'll pray for catching it again. It must be very fun! :-D
I love eating especially delicious one.In hong kong,there is pancake powder which is the mixture of flour ,batter and the like.The main advantage of pancake powder is that it save the precious time of hk people.however, the taste of pancakes which made form pancake powder is not quite good .I think maybe it is because the lack of fresh ingredients such milk and eggs.
Hello Kate! Nice to e-meet you. Pancakes are not as widespread as they are in the UK. I hardly eat them. I will definitely try that kind of filling though. We usually eat frittelle(fritters) and crostoli when it is Carnival. For example, my boss brought us fritters filled with zabaione or cream and crostoli on Shrove Tuesday. I generally make my resolutions on January 1st. I do not eat meat on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. I eat pasta with pilchards or anchovies on these two days. Some people who are more strictly religious do not eat meat every Friday of Lent. Have a great week!!
Hi Kate!,thank you so much for sharing the recipe with us (I cannot wait to try to make pancakes!!) also reading your recipe reminds me a really good friend of mine who loves pancakes topping with bananas and syrup. Have a lovely March!!
Hi Kate, welcome. Although I'm not the most appropiate, because today has been the first day that I entered in this site. I read and post with regularity into the other blogs, but I've never clicked on staff blog (I don't know why). Well, go to the bussiness. I don't cook pankakes, but I tasted them from time to time and are delicious. The most simple the better. Some of them rolled with jam or cheese are the most. Oh, noooooooo. I must leave you, this topic has opened my appetite. I must gooooooo.
Hello, I am very very pleased to feel that I had joined in your family. Your studies are quite effective because you reach us by varios ways.For examples, altough I look up at your site in every day, as for today,I reached you from facebook message.Thank you for you keeping us warmly. Selma,
congratulations for your ads because i´m interesting in learn how to cook this kind of food
Hello Kate. This is the first time I write a comment on blogs because I am rather new here. I enjoyed the text and also the photos you put here of tossing pancakes. We have something like British pancake here with a bit differences. It contains flour, sugar, egg, and water/milk and it is also fried in a pan. It is called "kaka" in my area (north of Iran).I would love to try your pancake based on your recipe. :) Have a nice time.
We named this pan cake as "krep" or "gözleme". Cooking method almost same.
We named this pan cake as "krep". Cooking method almost same. Said Hatice I want to add something for Panccake (krep)to eat.You try to eating, put to into jam ( especially cherry jam)and cheese. I hope you enjoy it.
