Mooonfire!

I ran across this recipe in Thunder Bluff. My host attributed it to the Northrend Taunka, but I’ve made the odd change. This recipe seems very suited to our Tauren culture- it is simple, hot food that can be prepared quickly and with the use of very few tools- and it is easy to remember, so you need not carry bulky tomes of recipes about.

~Llanion

Difficulty: Easy.
Exotic ingredients or materials: None.
Time: Easily sub-30 minutes. I took 25 from ‘gathering ingredients’ to ‘nom nom nom delicious’, and that was while taking pictures.

You will need:

A spatula
A frying pan (You may also use an electric griddle- if you use a no-stick pan or griddle, make sure the spatula is appropriate to it, I.E. probably not metal)
Two bowls (Note that in this recipe I am making enough for one person. Larger groups mean larger bowls.)
A measuring cup
A fork
A large spoon

And the ingredients:
Per one person (or four pancakes) you will need the following.

Approximately one and one-third teaspoons of baking powder. For those who are curious, it should scale such that with three people eating, you have four teaspoons. I routinely just use “one and a bit”.

You’re gonna need an egg. One egg per person. Don’t crack it yet, wait for the instructions.

You’re gonna need milk. Half a cup of milk per person, actually. Your choice as to what kind, I used 1% Skim Milk because that’s what I had on hand. If it looks like I put too much milk in the measuring cup, that’s only because I put too much milk in the measuring cup. Whoops. It didn’t harm the recipe too much, though they would have been fluffier without quite so much milk.

Flour! Half a cup per raid member person at the meal. If you manage to have different quantities of milk and flour in this recipe, something is very wrong. You can theoretically use any kind of flour- I use all-purpose (referred to as “hard white”) flour.

[Recap:
1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1 1/3 tsp baking powder
1/2 c. milk
1 egg
per 4 pancakes]

Instructions:
(Think of this as your strategy for the boss fight.)
Combine baking powder and flour and mix in the larger of the bowls, as shown below (top left).
Separate the egg, putting the white in the smaller bowl (shown below, bottom left) and the yolk in the milk (below, top right).

(To separate an egg: Crack it over the bowl in which you want the white to end up. You can move the egg yolk back and forth between the two halves of the shell. If you’re careful, the ’skin’ around the yolk will not break, and the white will simply pour into your bowl, leaving you with the yolk in a half-shell. You can discard the shell once you’re done getting the yolk and white to their separate destinations.)

Beat the egg yolk and milk together, forming a yellowish liquid; pour this into the flour mixture and stir thoroughly with a fork. You want this mixture to be quite smooth, with no lumps (people who have used other pancake recipes are probably looking at you funny even now. Ignore them. Batter should be smooth).

Put the frying pan on the stove, turn on your griddle, or otherwise prepare your heat-source at a medium heat. Don’t put the butter on yet.

Beat the egg white vigorously for five minutes with a fork, wire whisk, or handheld blender (tip: If you’re using the latter two options, use an appropriate bowl. Attempting to use a hand blender in a bowl such as the one pictured above would be disastrous and also messy). Unfortunately my camera wouldn’t focus correctly, but the proper texture for at least the top half of the egg white should be frothy (above, bottom right). If you’re doing this by hand, it may be harder than you’d thought. Do the best you can.

Pour the egg white on top of the batter and fold it in with a fork until there are no more white streaks or froth around the edges.

(To fold something into a batter, place the something on top, and sort of scoop the batter with your fork and draw it across over the things you’re folding in.)

By this time your pan should be nicely heated. Add a little butter (or margarine, if you’d rather).

When the butter is nicely melted on the parts of the pan you intend to use, scoop or pour approximately 1/4 of a cup (if you’re following the single-person recipe, that will be about one quarter of your batter as well) into the pan.

Cook for several minutes, turn, and cook the other side. Below is a picture of a pancake that’s almost ready for flipping: When the little bubble-holes pop without closing and the edges of the pancake start to lose their shine, it’s ready to flip. You’ll eventually be able to time them by instinct.

If you’re reasonably confident in your ability to not burn the pancakes, and if your sink is nearby, this is an excellent time to wash the bowl you beat the egg whites in, the fork or whisk you used, your teaspoon measure and your measuring cup. You should also put away any ingredients you still have out at this point.

When you’ve gotten the last pancake into the pan, it’s a good time to wash whatever spoon or ladle you might have used to get the batter from the bowl to the pan, plus the bowl itself. This batter is extraordinarily easy to clean off dishes, provided you don’t give it time to sit around getting all gunky.

Once the last pancake is out of the pan, turn off the heat. You will, unfortunately, have to wait for the pan to cool before you can wash it, but the spatula should be washable now.

As shown above, I was a little too impatient to wait for the camera. Traditionally, pancakes are served hot with maple syrup, but they are also excellent with sliced fruits or berries, whipped cream, jams or jellies, fruit or chocolate syrups and butter. This recipe does not include sugar, meaning these pancakes also go well as an accompaniment to sharp cheeses or other savories.

Optional ingredients you could add: A half-teaspoon of vanilla; a teaspoon of sugar and a quarter-teaspoon of cinnamon; a teaspoon of honey.

Caution: Savory sauces and seasoninings preclude sweet additives and vice versa- in other words, you probably don’t want honey-cinnamon pancakes with cheddar cheese.

It seems this recipe is rarely served to non-Tauren. I wonder why? Plainstrider eggs and simple flour are plentiful in Mulgore… ~Llanion

Welcome, one and all, to what is sort-of about to become a regular feature here at Mooonfire: The Friday Food.

Let me be frank. I am a passionate eater. I enjoy good food, possibly disproportionately (though this should not lead you to assume I dislike ‘cheap’ food. Ramen? Kraft Dinner? Cheez Whiz and plastic hamburgers? I’m there, too). “It Tastes Like Chicken” is an achievement I honestly find right in line with my personal philosophies. And, right along with this inclination, there is an inclination and even some talent with regards to the arena of food preparation. I love to cook. I enjoy putting raw things in the vicinity of heat, turning them into cooked things, and eating the result. (I’m not so big on the resulting dishes.)

And really, when you think about it, and/or after you’ve done it for a while, cooking is

1. Not that scary.
2. Not very hard.
3. Something gamers should naturally be good at.

Gamers are good at following lists of instructions. That’s what cooking is. Gamers are good at improvising when the situation calls for it. That has its place in cookery. Gamers are often quite dextrous, which is useful for handling a knife without making it Four-meat Pizza and taking a subsequent trip to the hospital. Gamers have quick reflexes, as a rule. This, too, has its place in cooking.

In cooking, as in WoW, preparation will ensure simplicity, and practice will ensure success.

In WoW, we always make a point of making our gear, potion, and ability buttons easy to access in a hurry, because it’s disheartening to watch the clouds of smoke that herald someone or something burning to a blackened crisp while you scramble around looking for Dispel Curse. In cookery, it’s good to have the utensils you expect to need ready to hand, because if you replace “Dispel Curse” with “a spatula” in the scenario above, it is every bit as valid.

In Warcraft, we know that our first few attempts on a boss may (or may not) be successes, but we try to learn from what we just did and vow that next time, we’ll walk away with delicious loot.

Now replace “Warcraft” with “the kitchen”, “on a boss” with “of a recipe”, and “loot” with “food”. See?

This is getting long-winded and I haven’t explained what I’m up to, so this is it in a nutshell:
Every Friday, I’m going to post a recipe. It will always be something I have tried. It will almost certainly have pictures. It may or may not be framed as a back-story entry.

I hope you’ll try some of these- and may your threat be low when the Washing Dishes debuff is handed out.