Fruit-Filled Lemon-Ricotta Pancake “Omelets”

If you’ve never had a ricotta pancake, you’ve been missing a real treat. The richness of taste and texture that ricotta adds brings the pancake’s fully goodness to a new level. And in this recipe, we’ll be giving these already delicious pancakes some extra special treatments:
• We’ll make our own fresh ricotta. (You’ll love how easy it is!) Of course, if you prefer to use packaged ricotta from the supermarket, that’s ok too.)
• We’ll make each pancake a bit larger than normal – one pancake will be a full portion – and fold it over, omelet-style, with a fruit and bacon filling inside.
• As always, all of this goodness will be made even better by being reduced fat!
Time to get started! This recipe is in three parts – the ricotta, the fruit filling, and the pancakes – and, when combined, makes four generous servings.


Making the Ricotta
As mentioned above, if you prefer to use store-bought ricotta, just skip this step and go on to the next. If you’re thinking about making your own fresh ricotta, however, and are concerned that you may not have the skills needed, here’s a simple quiz you can do in the privacy of your own home to find out: 


Can you read a thermometer? (     ) Yes   (     ) No
 
If you answered "Yes", congratulations...you’re a born ricotta maker! (You’ll also need a candy thermometer; that’s something you’ll find useful to have for a wide range of cooking projects.)


This portion of the recipe makes about a cup of ricotta.


Zest a large lemon and set the zest aside. We’ll use it later for the pancakes.


Combine 2 quarts of 2% milk and the juice of the zested lemon in a large, heavy-bottomed pot. (Steel or enameled only.)




Cook over medium-high heat, stirring gently and constantly, until the temperature reaches 170 degrees as measured with a candy thermometer. (By now you’ll see the mixture should be separating into solids (“curds”) and a pale, milky liquid (“whey”).)


Stop stirring but continue to heat the mixture until the temperature reaches 190 degrees.


Remove the pot from the heat, cover and let rest for 20-30 minutes.


Line a colander with fine-mesh cheese cloth and place it on a large bowl. Pour the milk mixture into the colander to strain out the curds while capturing the whey (about quart or a little more) in the bowl. (Don’t discard the whey. More on this later.)


After about five minutes, tie the top of the cheesecloth with twine to form a bag, and hang over the sink or other location to drip for about another 15 minutes.




Transfer the cheese curd to a bowl, and add salt, starting with ½ tsp and adding more to taste. (You’ll probably end up using about 1 teaspoon all together, but judge the amount by the taste.)


Use the cheese right away (warm is good) or store it in an airtight container and refrigerate. Since it has no preservatives, use it within 2 or 3 days. Do not save the cheese longer than that.


With our cheese now made, here’s a word about the whey before we go on to the rest of the recipe. Inexplicably, practically every ricotta recipe out there says to discard the whey after straining the curds. With the guidance of Facebook friend, chef, cheese-maker (and purveyor of fine scarves!) Maya, however, I was enlightened as to the wonderful taste, texture and health benefits whey brings to breads, soups, or other recipes when used as a substitute for water or even milk. (Click here for a very helpful site she suggested.) Thank you, Maya, for showing me the whey! (Ahem...sorry, couldn't resist.)


Making the Fruit Filling (With Just a Bit of Bacon!)
I used apples for the filling, but feel free to use whatever fruit suits your fancy.


Cook 2 – 4 slices of turkey bacon till slightly crisp and set aside.


Combine 1 cup of sugar and the juice of one lemon in a medium saucepan and heat over low heat until the sugar has melted, stirring often.




Add four Granny Smith apples, peeled and cut into ¼”- ½” wedges, along with ¼ teaspoon of ground nutmeg and 1 tablespoon of butter substitute, to the saucepan and mix well to coat with the melted sugar.  Cook over medium heat until the apples are soft and the liquid is reduced. Turn off heat and let rest to thicken the liquid while you make the pancakes in the next step. Crumble or chop the bacon and add before using.


Making the Pancakes
Now that we've got our fresh ricotta and the filling...



Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.


Combine 1-1/2 cups of skim milk; ½ cup of low-fat ricotta cheese; 2 tablespoons of melted butter substitute; 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract; zest of one lemon, and one egg-substitute egg.




Sift together 1-1/2 cups of all-purpose flour; 1 tablespoon of baking powder; 3/4 teaspoon of salt; 3 tablespoons of sugar, and ¼ teaspoon of nutmeg. Mix the dry ingredients into the milk mixture until combined.
Combine 2 fresh egg whites and pinch of salt, and beat until soft peaks form. Fold the egg whites in parts into the batter, working carefully to keep the fluffiness.




Melt 1 teaspoon of butter substitute on a griddle or crepe pan. Working one pancake at a time, pour ¾ cup of the pancake batter onto the griddle or crepe pan and cook until done, turning half-way. (Tip: Because the pancakes are very large, using a plate makes flipping them a lot easier! Slide the half cooked pancake onto a plate, cooked side down, and drain any excess liquid from the griddle or pan. Turn the pan over on top of the plate, turn them both over together, and remove the plate. Your uber-pancake is now flipped!)


Once all the pancakes are cooked, place them on a baking sheet and place in the oven for about 4 minutes to finish. (I’ve found this oven step gives a nice texture to the pancakes, both inside and outside.)


To plate, place some of the fruit filling on half of the pancake (and, if you like, some of the ricotta for extra richness), and fold the pancake over as with an omelet.


Top the folded pancake "omelet" with butter substitute and syrup or preserves, serve with an appropriate side dish, such as turkey sausage, and you’ve got a breakfast – or lunch, or dinner! – that is as fresh as it is good-tasting.


I hope you enjoy making and serving this special pancake meal, and that you’ll come back again next week for another recipe! Till then stay well, keep it about the food, and always remember to kiss the cook. ;-)

Quiche Me, Baby

Cooking ideas can come from some pretty unexpected places. You just have to be ready. More on that in a moment.


Since recipes must be called something. I decided to name this week's offering, "Trinity Quiche," in honor of its main vegetable component, Louisiana's famed “trinity” of celery, onions and peppers. (It also has mushrooms. I think everyone who cooks has certain ingredients that seem to find their way into almost every recipe. For me it's mushrooms, for their nice taste, peculiar sort-of-soft-and-sort-of-crunchy texture, and their comically off-balance appearance that makes them the culinary world's version of penguins or, if you like, giraffes.) Adding to the "three" concept are its three cheeses which, combined, get along with each other wonderfully.


One oddity you'll find in this recipe is that the milk usually used in making quiche is replaced by a mixture of ingredients you'll probably recognize as a pancake batter. Here's where getting ideas from unexpected places comes in. Some years back I was looking for a way to improve the texture of the quiche filling I was using in those days. While dining at IHOP, I had an “aha!” moment when I read on the menu that they make their scrambled eggs fluffy by mixing in pancake batter. I tried that idea in the quiche filling and the rest, while not history, did give it the texture I'd been looking for.


Of course, if you prefer other combinations of vegetables, or different cheeses, great! One of the real beauties of quiche is that there's a lot of room to improvise and experiment. If there's something in your pantry, refrigerator or freezer you feel like making part of your quiche, go for it!


Preheat the oven to 425 degrees and blind bake a 9” pie crust. (If you’ve never baked a pie or quiche and aren’t sure how to blind bake a crust, just let me know and I’ll describe what to do. It’s basically getting the unfilled crust to a partially baked state (or, for a refrigerator pie, a fully baked state), then adding the filling and finishing the pie or quiche.) Prepare the other ingredients below during the blind baking, looking in on the crust now and then to prevent overcooking. When it is firm and starting to get “crusty,” take it out of the oven, use a brush to apply an egg wash made from one egg and one tablespoon of water, and set it aside.


While the crust is blind baking, sauté about 1-1/2 cups of mixed chopped celery, chopped pepper, julienned onion, and mushrooms. Season with salt and pepper to taste, but if you're using the mushrooms hold off adding the salt till you're almost done; mushrooms have a high water content and adding the salt early draws some of that water out and affects the final texture of the mushrooms. When the vegetables are cooked (but still have a firm texture), place them in a colander and rinse them well with cold water. This stops the cooking, and cools the vegetables so they won't prematurely cook the eggs in the filling when you mix everything together later. Set them aside.


Prepare the “pancake batter” by combining 3/4 cup all-purpose flour, 1-1/4 teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1-1/2 tablespoons sugar, 1 egg-substitute egg,  5 ounces skim milk, and 1-1/2 tablespoons of melted butter substitute. Whisk until they form a batter.


In a large bowl, combine ¼ cup grated Swiss cheese, ¼ cup grated sharp cheddar cheese, 1/8 cup crumbled goat cheese, 3 egg substitute eggs, ½ cup skim milk, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and a pinch of fresh ground black pepper.  Add the cooked vegetables and the batter, whisk until combined, and fill the blind-baked crust.


Bake the quiche at 425 for 15 minutes. During this time, partially cook 2 slices of turkey bacon. (For example, if the 2 slices should be microwaved for two minutes to be fully cooked, microwave them for about one minute. They'll cook more later when you finish baking the quiche.) When the bacon slices are done, cut them into small pieces.


Reduce the oven temperature to 300.  Remove the quiche from the oven, and sprinkle the bacon pieces over the surface. By now the surface of the quiche filling should be firm enough so that the bacon pieces will stay on top without sinking.  Return the quiche to the 300 degree oven and cook for 30-35 minutes, until a knife inserted half-way between center and the edge comes out clean.  Let the quiche stand 10 minutes before serving. A salad or cup of tomato soup on the side goes very well with this.


As an added bonus, if you find you have some filling mix left over after making the quiche, I recommend saving it to make one of the best omelettes you'll ever have. And one of the easiest, since everything's already mixed in.


If you would like a notebook-ready, cookbook-style version of Trinity Quiche or any other recipe on this site, just let me know and I’ll get it right out to you. Ditto for any questions you may have about anything I’ve written that you'd like more information about.


See you next week! Till then, stay well, keep it about the food, and always remember to kiss the cook. ;-)

Fluffy (and Reduced Fat!) Blueberry Pancakes with Strawberry Syrup

Back in the 80's, a couple of decades before really becoming interested in cooking, one of the first foods I learned to make was pancakes. I improvised a reduced-fat version of a recipe I'd found in one of those privately-published cookbooks from someone's long-forgotten fundraiser. And for the next 20+ years, that recipe - tasting the whole time like one of the first foods I learned to make - was the one I used . The pancakes were ok, in a sorta-kinda way, but I wanted better flavor and a fluffier texture.


Fast-forward to the present time, and the significantly improved recipe which follows below. Two key elements to the improved version are the addition of a bit of nutmeg, a spice whose versatility I'm coming to appreciate more every day, and beaten egg whites in place of the egg-substitute eggs I'd always relied on. (When you make this, or anything else involving beaten egg whites, it's very important to use real egg whites from separated eggs, and not the egg whites you pour from a carton. The packaged kind may be great for reducing fat and cholesterol, but I've found they don't stiffen into peaks when beaten the way fresh egg whites do.)


Your fresh pancakes, of course, will deserve to be topped with something special, so we'll start by putting together a delicious - and easy-to-make - fresh strawberry syrup. This tasty topping is made even better by containing chunks of strawberry. (It doesn't look like the syrup at the pancake house, but that's the whole point of making your own in the first place!) Since it's best to have the syrup already on hand when the pancakes are done cooking, you can make a batch ahead of time. It stores well in the refrigerator, so there's no problem making it even a day or two before.


So let's get started! For the reasons mentioned, we'll do the syrup first. This recipe makes about a pint.
Begin by putting a glass plate or saucer in the freezer.  If you’ve never done that and don’t know why you would do something so strange, bear with me. Its purpose will be clear shortly.



Hull and quarter 1 pound of fresh strawberries.


Combine 1 cup of sugar and the juice of one lemon in a medium saucepan. Before turning on the heat, mix it well until the sugar and juice are combined and the mixture resembles an Italian lemon ice. Once they’re mixed, turn the heat on very low until the sugar is melted, stirring often.


Add the strawberries, ¼ teaspoon of ground nutmeg and one tablespoon of butter substitute to the saucepan and mix well till all the strawberries are coated with the melted sugar. Increase the heat to medium and cook until the strawberries are soft. When they’re done, remove the strawberries, draining any excess liquid back to the saucepan, and set them aside.
 
Continue to cook the liquid until it is reduced to about half. Then remove the saucepan from the heat and let it cool. (Since the liquid will be thin from being very hot, you can check the thickness it will have once it’s cooled by putting a few drops on that plate you placed in the freezer at the beginning. That’s a useful trick from the world of jam and jelly making.) Once the liquid has the thickness you want, add it to the strawberries, and either serve immediately or refrigerate for later use. (Waiting until the liquid cools before adding it to the strawberries is important; adding it hot will continue to cook the strawberries and make them mushy.)
Now that you’ve got some great syrup, let’s make those fluffy pancakes!
Combine 1-1/4 cups of skim milk, 2 tablespoons of melted butter substitute, and 1 teaspoon of vanilla in a bowl.
In a separate bowl, sift together 1-1/2 cups of all-purpose flour, 1 tablespoon of baking powder, ¾ teaspoon of salt, 3 tablespoons of sugar, and ¼ teaspoon of ground nutmeg.
Combine these dry ingredients with the milk mixture and mix until a batter is formed.
In a bowl (you can save dishes by washing out and reusing the bowl you just combined the dry ingredients in), combine four egg whites and a pinch of salt and beat on high until stiff peaks form.
Fold the beaten egg whites in parts into the batter, working carefully to keep the fluffiness.
The batter is ready. Now let’s get on the fluffy blueberry pancake express!
Melt 1 teaspoon of butter substitute on the griddle, and pour out pancakes of about ¼ cup of batter each. Cook over medium heat until done on the bottom, then add some blueberries (fresh is best, but frozen ones work too) to the uncooked tops and turn the pancakes over, cooking until done. Repeat until all the batter is cooked. (To do the whole bowl of batter, you’ll need about 1 cup of blueberries. Note that there’s no need to dust them with flour before adding them to the pancakes.)
And there you have it!


For a cookbook-style, notebook-ready copy of these or any other recipes on this site, send me an e-mail and I'll get it right to you.


Thanks for visiting. Till next week, stay well, keep it about the food, and always remember to kiss the cook. ;-)