Chewing over

Pancakes! Have you heard? The BBC recipe repository is about to close down and they are doing a stock take – must be fun comparing various stats. They found that the most clicked on recipe ever was precisely that: pancakes.

I don’t know whether that means it’s the nation’s favourite food or whether no one has a flying clue how to cook them since we don’t tend to search for dishes we can cook with our eyes closed. I never look up pasta recipes, unless a very specific type. I don’t search for meat dishes – meat and I have an affinity and understand each other so well that I just follow my heart… when cooking. I generally know what to do with fish, too, and I concoct my sides and salads without uncle Google’s help.

What’s interesting is that in the top 10 nary a savoury or healthy dish is to be found! Obesity threats nor hipster trends can clearly threaten the sweet tooth. Of course, on the other hand, it could be all the clean eaters and paleo dieters who seek substitute comfort and I don’t blame them one bit. Who wouldn’t yearn for a ‘fluffy American pancake’ after all the chia seeds and almond milk? Not that they are all that bad, especially together, as I’ve recently found.

Pancakes are in fact very transcendent food: a flat base of sustenance to carry various flavours. See pizza, tortillas, pita, galettes (which are pancakes, of course), laobing, lavash or okonomiyaki – all of them pancakes.

So the final line must be my pancake mix recipe, must it not? And even though the classics are sweet rather than savoury - the lemon and sugar or the Suzette - spinach and blue cheese filling is heaven. And it makes you feel a bit more better about noshing four or five of those – after all, you’re having one of your five-a-day in each one…