Everything that Rises Must Converge*

I guess you could say that I’m on a pancake streak. I can’t help myself. Or maybe it’s a citrus streak. I’m learning that I love citrus desserts—and citrus desserts that double as breakfast, or the other way around.

I have this old issue of Gourmet that’s been lying around my apartment. I shift it to various stacks, but I never quite let it out of my sight. It has a photograph of a strawberry tart on its cover. It’s from April 2009. Inside this magazine there is an article titled “Transformers” about the magical things that a cook can do with three eggs and two lemons (and a few other pantry staples). It’s better than it sounds. It’s better than I’m able to describe here. There is a simple lemon glazed butter cake, an airy and elegant Pavlova, a light-as-air snow pudding (a remarkable concept for a dessert—something like my favorite île flottant, I imagine), a pudding cake, and then today’s star: the Dutch baby with lemon sugar. What on earth is a Dutch baby, I asked myself? It looks a little like a large crêpe, but its edges are puffed and browned, it is crinkly in the center, and it’s made in the oven, in a hot skillet or Dutch oven. It’s a pancake that is also like a popover; it’s a simple breakfast that would also be a most elegant, romantic dessert.

I was intrigued. The magazine has been spread open to this page for weeks now. It began to take on epic proportions in the mind—will it live up to my fantasy of it, I wondered? Or will it fall flat, be much different in real life, much smaller, less perfectly imperfect, less lovingly browned, with less crisp turned-over edges? This is how it can be with reproductions—they enter the mind and then they, sometimes, collide unpleasantly with the real thing, leaving one in all manner of disappointment and malcontent (a bit like heartbreak).

I decided to give it a try nevertheless. It’s thanks to you, really, dear blog, and dear few reader friends that I have. I thought to myself, this crew won’t mind if I fail and perhaps, then, neither will I.

I rose early this morning. I went through the methodical preparations of readying the kitchen for baking—utensils spread out on a just-wiped kitchen table, measuring implements stacked, dirty dishes cleaned and put away. I thought of various things while I did this. I also thought of nothing—only the task that was before me. This is the greatest gift that cooking can bring—a total clearing out of mind. I felt myself begin to relax.

I didn’t use an electric mixer as the recipe suggests, but whipped up the ingredients by hand. I prefer to do things this way sometimes. I made other various divergences while following the recipe, but the largest, most significant one, was the substitution of a 10-inch skillet for my trusty old 9-inch, red Dutch oven. I thought to myself that I would simply use less of the batter—that there would not be any need, there could not be any need, to go out and buy a brand new skillet.

Then I thought that I was wrong.

I forgot to reduce the amount of the batter. I forgot to add the right amount of butter. In it went anyway and roughly 20 minutes later it had risen into the most frightening looking variation of a pancake I have ever seen—it was sticking to an oven rack high above it; it was puffed in unearthly, haphazard ways; it was glossy and not at all dimpled; and it was browning unevenly. The height of the thing was remarkable—it filled the entire depth of the Dutch oven (an apparatus meant to hold several cups of stew…).

It had risen to unnatural proportions. My blog entry would now be about my epic failure, brought about by my inability to follow simple directions, a trait that, really, has been hounding me more or less for my entire life…

But then the most amazing thing happened: I took it out of the oven, set it down, and began to photograph it. Ever-so-slightly, through the lens of the camera’s eye, it started to converge onto itself; it sank bit by bit, until it had become the height of a normal pancake—that is, save for the lovely, rustic, elegantly browned edge that surrounded it. This was monumental and this was epic, but not in the way of disappointment that I had originally feared.

It reminded me that cooking is forgiving—a lesson that I learned last week and then promptly forget.

I took it out of its pan and placed it on a large white plate. Then I followed the recipe exactly: I sprinkled it generously with sugar that had been soaking up the oils from the zest of two lemons.

In the end it was transformed indeed, and so, ever-so-slightly, was I.

*P.S. The title of this entry is taken from Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Everything that Rises Must Converge.”

Dutch Baby with Lemon Sugar (adapted from Gourmet, “Transformers,” April 2009)

1/3 cup sugar (I used organic sugar, which is not quite as white)

2 teaspoons lemon zest (from approximately 2 lemons)

3 eggs at room temperature for about 30 minutes

1/3 cup low-fat milk

1/3 cup half and half

2/3 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract (the real stuff)

1/8 teaspoon cinammon

1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon salt

2–3 tablespoons of unsalted butter (I like Straus)

Lemon wedges (and the juice inside of them) for serving

Place a rack in the middle of the oven and remove any racks above this one (I learned the hard way, with my pancake pushing itself adamantly into my top oven rack.)

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

In a small bowl or ramekin mix together the sugar and the lemon zest; set aside. Put a 9 to10­–inch Dutch oven or skillet in the warm oven to preheat.

Beat the eggs in a medium bowl with a whisk, until pale in color and frothy. Add the milk and half and half, flour, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt, and whisk this together until the batter is smooth. The original recipe suggests doing this with an electric mixer for about a minute. I beat it by hand, not very vigorously, for probably thirty seconds or so. The batter will be quite thin, and you will truly be unable to conceive of how on earth this will ever turn into the final product that you desire.

Place 2 to 3 tablespoons of unsalted butter in the hot skillet or Dutch oven and swirl it around until it is melted. Pour the batter into the pan and return it to the oven. Bake for approximately 25 minutes or until the pancake has puffed and the edges are browned.

Allow the Dutch baby to rest just until it has sunken inward. Turn out onto a plate (carefully) if desired, sprinkle generously with the lemon sugar and serve with lemon wedges for squeezing.

Notes: I used organic sugar; I liked the slightly beige color of the sugar mixed with the lemon zest on top of the pancake, but I’m sure pure white would also be nice in its own way, too. The recipe also calls for whole milk. I had only low-fat milk and half and half in my fridge, so I used 1/3 of each to reach the required 2/3 liquid total. (This was one of the many divergences or should I say, ahem, liberties, that I took with this recipe.) It worked out just fine. I would use whatever you have on hand, because a pancake for breakfast isn’t really that fun if it requires all sorts of special ingredients. This one won’t. It’ll take to your adjustments beautifully.

Last Night (and a Morning Pancake)

Last night, unfortunately, brought more disappointment in the heartache department. And this morning, up at 5 am as I was, contemplating love, and life, and the meaning of the universe (I can figure this stuff out by 10 am, right?), I feel, sadly, that the orange-ricotta-pancake high that I was on since yesterday is now but a dim wave, lapping lazily against my ocean’s floor.

But, oh!, look at those photos… billowy stacks flecked with the zest of an orange, bites of airy ricotta, swirling in a puddle of maple syrup and melted butter on my ever-so-slightly-warmed plate! Surely one cannot truly despair when visions of orange and ricotta whipped majestically into a sort of “cake” made in a “pan” are before them? Surely…

It takes a lot of courage to get up in the morning sometimes and to face the computer screen and to think, in one’s solitary state, I can begin again; there will be many more mornings, better than this one; they will be orange-and-ricotta scented; there will be happiness—and in fact, as they always say (those optimistic types), it won’t always be this way, things will get better. And it would all be true. I just know it somehow; perhaps it’s the cook in me—she’s optimistic by nature, she knows somehow that when your first pancake has burned and your butter is a browned, greasy mess in the middle of your too-small pan, that you can scrape it clean and start again. You can find a masculine, nonstick griddle who needs but a little heat (no grease!) to get things sizzling… but I’m mixing metaphors here.

Alas, it was this way with the pancakes. The first batch was a total flop. But it seemed so promising!, I thought wistfully to myself. And it was, in fact, promising and more than that, once I saddled my determination—got the hunger in me to twist itself out of defeatism—and began again, with a new pan and a new strategy that felt, how should I say this?, more like me.

The recipe is promising and delicious and all of the things that you want out of a Saturday morning when you have a bit of time on your hands (just a bit) and the need for something warm and sizzling to perfume your entire kitchen and the neighbor’s hallway. As I learned from Nigel Slater, from whom this recipe derives, it’s also an excellent afternoon snack, to be taken, preferably, with a good friend, accompanied by a nice chat, some new ideas kicked around, a few hearty sarcastic cracks at the whole enterprise of love, and tea, of course. That was how it was for me. I ate these twice in one day. Once alone, a stack of three warm cakes on the plate, a generous pat of butter, and a drizzle of maple syrup, with my coffee; and then again, later, with my good friend S., with tea and syrup and a bit of Greek yogurt on the side.

Both times were good, for different reasons.

You begin by mixing together ricotta cheese, sugar, egg yolks, and orange zest. Then you mix into that some flour, an impossibly small amount, and then gently fold into this mixture egg whites that have been whipped into peaks. The whole thing at this point is nothing if not luscious—light and fragrant and simply beaming—it will transport you. 

If you succeed at folding in the whites without utterly deflating them, you will also feel proud, as I did (if you didn’t, don’t worry!, you can start again!, no one can see you in there, in the privacy of your own kitchen). You will look at your light-as-air mixture, and you will think, ha! look what I did!

Nigel suggests cooking these in large tablespoonfuls in a nonstick pan with melted butter. Maybe this works for him—I’m sure his pancakes are divine, and I’m sure I would gladly eat them at his kitchen counter any day—but the method didn’t work for me. I tried it, but my heart wasn’t in it from the start. I’ve never much liked pancakes that have been cooked in butter—I prefer the thin crust that forms when you cook them in nothing whatsoever except for the heat of the griddle, warmed until a drop of water dances chaotically across the surface. So that’s what I did, after the first batch came out all manner of burned and blackened and too greasy for anyone’s good.

At first it seemed that the griddle technique wouldn’t work—the pancakes seemed to be sticking… I was beside myself with grief. But I just tried to be patient. I waited, and waited. I waited until the edges of each little cake became slowly outlined in a light brown and until little, discrete bubbles seemed to open, ever so slightly, onto each surface. Then I turned them. And I won’t conceal the fact that I was utterly pleased with myself when I did.

Orange and ricotta pancakes—you and me are back on.

Orange and Ricotta Pancakes (adapted from Nigel Slater’s The Kitchen Diaries)

I should say that The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen with Nigel Slater is a beautiful book; if you like simple ingredients lists and honest, elegant prose, this book is for you.

1 cup ricotta cheese (store-bought ricotta works great)

4 tablespoons sugar

3 large eggs, separated

1 orange, the zest of which has been finely grated, avoiding the pith

1/2 cup of all-purpose flour

Butter, syrup, and orange wedges for serving

Combine the sugar, ricotta, egg yolks, and orange zest in a large mixing bowl. You can grate the orange zest directly into the bowl, no need to make this a separate step. Stir in the flour. Beat the egg whites in a bowl until semi-stiff peaks form (see the photo), and then gently fold this into the ricotta mixture. Nigel recommends a “surely but gently” method that I found was a good way to think about this folding process.

Warm a griddle. When a drop of water dances madly over the surface, bringing a smile to your face, begin dropping heaping tablespoonfuls of batter onto the griddle. I got four pancakes on at once. I felt that it helped to delicately smooth the batter into a circle, using a very light touch. You are not looking for perfection here, just rustic beauty. Cook the pancakes 1-2 minutes, until the edges begin to brown and a faint bubble or two cracks open on the surface, then flip them. Continue cooking until the bottom of each pancake is nicely browned and the pancakes are puffed.

Serve them while they are hot—I recommend a pat of sweet butter and a drizzle of cold syrup; Nigel likes a little melted apricot jam and some confectioners’ sugar.

Just eat them how you like them. And marvel at how nourished you feel with each delicate, cheesy crumb.

Notes: I cut the sugar by 1 tablespoon from the original; in the batch I made, I used 4 1/2 tablespoons rather than the recommended 5, but I still felt that it was a bit too sweet, so I’ve cut it further to 4 tbsp. in the recipe above. Use your judgment based on your own taste for sweet things—I prefer desserts and breakfasts to not be too sweet in general, but you may feel differently. These reheat beautifully if consumed later in the day, and I would imagine the next day as well. I heated them on a parchment-lined baking tray in a 350 degree oven.