West Virginia Buckwheat Pancakes with Apple Bourbon Compote

Hi friends,

I've been hibernating this fall, but just starting to break out of my chrysalis.  While I was back in West Virginia visiting my family for Thanksgiving, I discovered that a local WV specialty was buckwheat pancakes.  Since buckwheat is not actually wheat and therefore gluten-free, I picked a a 5 lb bag of locally buhr-ground buckwheat flour.  This means there's a lot of pancakes to be eaten.  I'll be making up pancakes on Sunday, starting around 11 am.  Please stop by for some pancakes.  If you want to bring something, bring along your favorite pancake topping or brunch side dish.

Please RSVP if you can make it so I know how many people to expect.

~Kimbo

For the past two years, my family planned a big family gathering in West Virginia over the Thanksgiving weekend.  When my dad was growing up, his family would travel to Upstate NY to meet up with all his aunts, uncles, & cousins for Thanksgiving.  This past year, much of my extended family on my father's side descended upon West Virginia to celebrate Thanksgiving, many of then driving through a snow storm.  

Family traveled in from St. Louis, Chicago, Boston, Cape Cod, Brooklyn, and Washington, D.C.  Flying from Alaska, I think I got the "Farthest Distance" award.

While in WV, I kept hearing about buckwheat pancakes.  At the local grocery store, I came across some locally buhr-ground buckwheat flour .

From their website: Buhr Grinding is an age old technique where we grind the buckwheat between two large stone wheels (buhrs).  Each buhr weighs about a ton and were imported from France around 1855.  (http://buckwheat-flour.com/history.html)

So even though this morning it was a bitter cold -40˚ F in town (but a balmy -20˚ F at my place), my friends bundled up and came over for pancakes. 

And they brought amazing gluten-free things to go with the pancakes: homemade jams (blueberry and raspberry), banana bourbon sauce with smoked sea salt, Bristol Bay King salmon smoked strips, peppered bacon, quinoa spinach quiche, black bean & egg casserole, sweet potato hash, fresh fruit, and juice. 

Our ongoing love affair with bacon
  

It was a fantastic feast, and it felt a bit like Stone Soup.

Say what you want about Gwyneth Paltrow, but she had a fantastic buckwheat pancake recipe:

http://ahealthykitchen.com/healthy-recipes/healthy-breakfast/breakfast-brunch/vegan-buckwheat-banana-pancakes-gwyneth-paltrow/

The flour I bought had a pancake recipe right on the bag.  The recipe on the bag was simpler, so I went with that, and it turned out great. 

 
I had never heard of yeast cakes before, but found them quite easily at the grocery store — they were in the refrigerator section, near the eggs. 

West Virginia Buckwheat Pancakes

*note* one change I made to this recipe is that I added an extra cup of warm water (a total of 2 ¼ cups of water) so that it had a pancake batter consistency.

Ingredients

1/3 Cake Fleischmann’s Yeast

2 1/4 cup warm water

1/2 tsp molasses

1 1/2 tsp salt

2 cups buckwheat flour

Directions

Dissolve 1/3 of the cake of yeast in warm water (warm enough to active the yeast but not scalding hot that would kill the yeast).

Stir in the molasses and salt to the water.

Stir in the buckwheat flour.

So, this is what the pancake batter looked like with the original amount of water:

So I added another cup (a total of 2 1/4 cups of warm water) and it looked a lot more like pancake batter.  Then let the batter sit for ~10-15 minutes.

Cook over a griddle (I oiled it with olive oil) and serve with delicious toppings.

Apple Bourbon Compote

Ingredients

1/2 stick (1/4 cup) butter

2 apples

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp cloves

1/2 cup raisins

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup bourbon

Directions

Peel, core, and chop the apples.

 
Melt the butter in a skillet.

Add the chopped apples, cinnamon, and cloves.

 

Cook down a bit until the apples are soft.  Add the raisins and sugar.

Shortly before serving, add in the bourbon and let it simmer a few minutes.

Quinoa, dried fruit, and almond granola

I came across a recipe for quinoa granola in a magazine a few weeks ago and thought I'd give it a try, but I wanted to alter the recipe to add in a number of things such as including oats and substituting in maple syrup... While oats are gluten-free, people who are quite sensitive to gluten should use gluten-free oats (such as Bob's Red Mill gluten-free oats) since most oats are processed in places that also process things with gluten and therefore may be contaminated with traces of gluten.

 

Today is one of those cold January days that is best spent at home—a perfect day to try a new recipe...

Xena and Kowie, the dogs that I’m housesitting, also agree.

Quinoa, dried fruit, and almond granola

Ingredients

1 c quinoa

2 c oats

1/2 c raw pumpkin seeds

1/4 c flax seeds

1/4 c raw, unsalted sunflower seeds

1 c raw almonds

1/4 c maple syrup

2 tbsp oil

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

1 c dried fruit (I used 1/4 c dried blueberries and 3/4 cup diced dried fruit mix included apples, peaches, apricots, prunes, and figs)

Directions

Rinse the quinoa with water and drain.

Add the quinoa and oats to a large mixing bowl.

Add the pumpkin seeds, flax seeds, and sunflower seeds.

Coarsely chop the almonds.

Add the almonds to the mixing bowl.

 

Mix together the maple syrup, oil, vanilla, cinnamon, and salt.  Pour liquid mixture over the other ingredients and mix thoroughly.

Spread evenly over a baking sheet.

Bake at 350° for 20 minutes, stirring every 7 minutes.

Cut up all the dried fruit to little bite-size pieces.

Pour the granola back into the (cleaned) mixing bowl.

Add in the dried fruit it in.

 

Store the cooled granola in an air-tight container.

The granola goes well with a dollop of yogurt.

London Fogs and Sweet Potato Pancakes

I've been meaning to get together with my friend Rachel for months now, so it was awesome that she called me up last week to announce that she was hungry for sweet potato pancakes.

Sweet potatoes are just one of those delicious and fantastically good-for-you foods, and sweet potato pancakes are easy to make gluten-free by swapping in GF flour.  While over the last few years I've become a dedicated morning coffee drinker, I've always enjoyed tea-- especially black teas.


At the Rookery Café in Juneau, I discovered this wonder tea latte-- the London Fog.  It's Earl Grey tea with steamed milk and a splash of vanilla simple syrup.  I'm a big fan of Earl Grey (I especially enjoy the double bergamot Earl Grey), so I decided to try making it at home.  Initially I bought a bottle of vanilla syrup like they have at the coffee shops, but then I decided to try to make the vanilla simple syrup from scratch.  Once you make a batch of vanilla simple syrup, store it in the refrigerator.  (I also tried to make pumpkin spice simple syrup, but that turned into a big sticky mess, so some drinks such as pumpkin spice lattes just are easier to get at a coffee shop)

I don't have a espresso machine to make the steamed milk, but awhile back when I was in the Lower 48, I picked up this hand-dandy milk frother for $1.99 at IKEA.  It's one of my favorite kitchen gadgets. 

London Fog

Ingredients
Earl Grey tea
1 cup milk
1 cup sugar
1.5 tbsp vanilla extract

Directions

Measure out 1 cup of water and 1 cup of sugar.

Add water and sugar to a pan.

Simmer on a medium heat until all the sugar dissolves and the liquid is clear.

Funnel the syrup into a glass bottle.

Add the vanilla extract.

Swirl the bottle to disperse the vanilla through the syrup.

Steep an Earl Grey tea bag in about 1 cup of just-slightly-less-than-boiling water for ~3 minutes. If you steep black tea too long, it becomes bitter.

Heat and froth the milk.  I usually just heat the milk in the microwave and then use my frother.  If you don't have an espresso machine or a frother, you can also froth the milk using a French press to froth milk by adding hot milk to the French press and plunging it a number of times to create air bubbles.

Add the steeped tea to the frothed milk.

Add ~1 teaspoon of the vanilla syrup and enjoy!

Sweet potato pancakes

Ingredients
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 1/2 cups milk
2 eggs
1 cooked sweet potato
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp salt
3 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 cups gluten-free flour

Directions

Mix the melted butter with the milk and eggs.

Scrape the inside of the sweet potato into the bowl.  If you want smooth pancakes, then you can use an electric mixer, but I usually leave the sweet potato somewhat chunky.

Add the nutmeg and salt.  I put Rachel to work grating the nutmeg.

Add the baking powder.

Mix in the flour.  Once again, I made Rachel work for her breakfast.

Rachel did an excellent job stirring the batter...

Cook the pancakes on a slightly oiled griddle over medium heat.

Usually you can tell when to flip pancakes by watching for bubbles to stop forming on the top of the pancakes, but these are a little more difficult to tell when they're ready to flip, so I just check to see when they're golden on the bottom and beginning to look pretty solid.

Sweet potato pancakes are especially good when topped with a bit of plain yogurt, pecans, and maple syrup.