Dripping with butter and maple syrup or topped with fruit and whipped cream, the humble pancake is at once so decadent and comforting that it is right that it should have its own holiday.
Pancakes are the traditional food for the last meal before the start of Lent, the Christian season of fasting that starts next week. Whether it is known as Fat Tuesday, Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Day, this day was used by our penitent ancestors to consume the last of the sugar, butter and eggs before the traditional 40 days of denial began.
"Denial" doesn't seem to be in Sarah Simington's vocabulary. The chef and owner of the Blue Moon Cafe in Fells Point, so famous for its weekend breakfasts that patrons wait hours for a table, thinks pancakes, like disco, should be danced to.
"My secret is to sing and dance to it," she said as she tossed ingredients into a bowl. "Have fun with it, get your boyfriend into it, get your husband into it, get your kids into it. It's a good thing."
The best thing about pancakes, she says, is their versatility. Fruit or sweets like chocolate chips are no-brainers. Her favorite way to vary the recipe is to caramelize apples and bacon and add them as the pancake begins to cook. But she is open to anything.
"Ham, broccoli and cheese pancakes? Why not? Just feel it."
Pancake recipes often require the cook to combine the wet and dry ingredients separately, to mix them gently and let the batter "rise" before ladling it onto a griddle. Other recipes call for cake flour to give the pancake more density. Simington is having none of it.
"Separating wet and dry is just a hassle," she said. "Throw it all in together, stir it up and you are ready to go.
"And I don't like to use cake flour. Too many glutens."
The result is a slightly thinner pancake, but one that is more than just a way to serve fruit or syrup. Simington's secret is vanilla. A lot of vanilla.
"Most recipes call for maybe a tablespoon. I like to add two or three. I want you to be able to taste the vanilla," said Simington, a "Mama-trained" cook who has operated the Blue Moon for more than 12 years.
A favorite dish among her diners is her oatmeal-and-brown-sugar pancakes. "Or if you want to be healthy, throw in a handful of buckwheat. They'll never know."
She has made savory pancakes as well, substituting salt for the sugar and adding herbs.
But pancakes from a box? Never.
