I tried to make pancakes for my family last week. It was a
huge disaster.
You might be thinking to yourself, “but Amanda, pancakes are
the easiest of foods to make! All that is required is batter, a pan, a little
flippy flop, and syrup or butter (if you’re into that sort of thing)” and I
would respond, “Optical illusion, my friend.”
Let me begin at the beginning.
In Phnom Penh I bought the “just add water to this line”
pancake batter. Those are my favorite
recipes to make, the “just add water” kind.
I am rather fond of the “vent and cook on high 3 minutes” kind generally
found in the frozen foods isle as well.
These meals should give you an idea about the person that I aim to
be. Anyway, I also got some syrup to
accompany what I thought would be the finest pancakes my village had ever seen.
Back in my village a few days later during hope bye trong (lunch
time), I got out the flattest pan I could find – which wasn’t a pan at all, it
was a wok. So instead of the oil I was
using as a substitute for butter coating the inside of the pan in even amounts,
it pooled in the center. Next I poured
the batter into the wok, not directly into the center but a little bit on the
sides. This was great because when I
went to scratch it off of the pan with the spatula, it was quite easier than it
might have been were all of the batter in the center of the wok. By this time my host mom had wandered back
inside to see what I was doing to her cookware, and watched me pour a second
attempt onto a different side of the wok with the same results: uneven cooking,
some burning, not a whole lot of flipping, followed by scraping and
re-oiling. I thought to myself, that’s
ok, the first two don’t need to turn out…that’s what the tent h is for! But my
host mom didn’t agree. She had taken the
spatula from me and tried herself to make the pancakes, already gathering what
I was attempting to do. She, however, tried
to do it a little easier than I did. She
poured the batter directly into the bottom of the wok, in the middle of a pool
of hot oil. What do you think came out?
Yes, that’s right. She put some fried
dough on the bowl in front of me which I dipped into syrup and put in my
mouth. I was hot and a little pancakey
and very delicious for a bite. Man
Kheang stood next to me, trying to see over the counter at what all the fuss
was about and I handed him a bit of fried dough and told him to dip it into the
syrup. He grinned at me after eating it –
at least this treat agreed with someone.
My host mom tried again and again and again (at least ten
times) to make the pancakes while I stood beside her offering brain waves of
encouragement. The tenth pancake saw me
watching the fried dough pile up and Man straight up spooning syrup into his
mouth.
When the batter was finally all fried up, my host mom
gestured to the bowl and told me to eat some lunch, probably thinking that this
is what Americans eat for lunch: a bowl of fried dough with syrup when they get
bored with peanut butter sandwiches. I
sat next to it for a few minutes before escaping to my room to make lunch out
of some care package goodies sent from Mom and Dad in the States. You can bet that the patron saint of the Post
Office gets a ton of “thank you” prayers. That night my host mom took the bowls over to
the health center to give the midwives some snacks. The fried dough/syrup combo got a great
approval rating.
I haven’t cooked since then, but lately I’ve begun to think
that it’d be hard to mess up tacos. After
all, I just have to do is throw together ingredients and if the boys or my host
mom does not like it, well, that’s on them! Any suggestions?
Bon Appetit!
Xo-Amanda
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