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Saturday, March 26, 2011

Corncakes a la Douglas Dinnette

Seasonal Recipe of the Week
Pancakes are good, but they can be a bit heavy. Corn bread is good but I would never cover it with maple syrup. So here is something sort of in the middle. I have not seen it served anywhere but my favorite little dinner in Douglas Michigan called the Douglas Dinette. The owner Margaret gave this recipe to me. I hope she is still there and I hope this place is still in business. She called them simply corncakes. The original recipe was for 1 gallon of batter so it might take a little tweaking to get the texture just right as well as adding in the altitude thing, so don’t be afraid to play with it to get the batter to the right texture — which should be like a crepe batter.

Ingredients
4 eggs
2 tablespoons canola oil
2 cups water
2 cups milk
2 cups cornmeal
1 cup buttermilk pancake mix (to slightly thicken batter)
Salt and pepper to taste

Procedure
Combine all ingredients and let batter sit 30 minutes. It needs to be slightly runny because it will thicken as the cornmeal absorbs liquid. Lightly oil a flattop or flat grill and get it real hot, this batter should sizzle as it hits the grill. Ladle on the batter, it should run into a very thin circle. Cook until it gets nice and brown on the bottom and then flip over. You want the edges to get dark brown. If they are big, like Margaret did them, she folded them onto the plate in quarters like a crepe and served them with butter and warm syrup. Sometimes the simple things in life are the best.