Taste and color: how chefs experiment with pancakes
This year's Broad Maslenitsa will be held from February 16 to 22, and pancakes will occupy the main place on our tables all this week. For the masters of haute cuisine, Carnival week is a great opportunity to demonstrate their imagination to the guests, so along with classic pancakes, we will find many original versions of the popular Russian dish. In which directions the chefs are experimenting this year, see the Izvestia article.
Nostalgic tastes
Throughout the year, pancakes are usually prepared for breakfast or served as a dessert. During the Carnival period, they become an independent dish, which can be eaten at any time of the day.
— The usual additives such as sour cream, jam, caviar, meat, mushrooms, are already a little boring, they will not surprise anyone, so chefs are looking for new flavor combinations to satisfy the gastronomic curiosity of guests, — Alexander Prytkin, chef of the Dachniki restaurant (Moscow), told Izvestia. — While working on our Shrovetide menu, my team and I decided to play with a sense of nostalgia.
Pancakes with chicken julienne
Julien, whose taste has been familiar to many since childhood, acted as a nostalgic element in our interlocutor's author's pancakes. Juicy and crispy oyster mushrooms were chosen for its preparation, which become very fragrant when fried. The dish is complemented with olive oil infused with black truffle. Another novelty for Shrovetide is pancakes with salmon rice, which have become a kind of interpretation of the classic version with red fish. They are covered with a sauce based on sour cream and Japanese hondashi broth and served with spinach and fried capers.
According to the observations of our expert, pancakes with poppy seeds or chocolate are especially popular now. Versions associated with proper nutrition, such as gluten-free, buckwheat or spinach, are also in high demand.
The Color Revolution
In recent years, chefs have increasingly added colored pancakes to pancake menus, using natural dyes for their preparation, such as beetroot, spinach, blueberries, cardamom, spices or juices. This allows you to experiment not only with the taste, but also with the appearance of the dish.
— Colored pancakes look bright and appetizing, they attract the attention of guests, especially on social networks, — says Alexey Vysotkov, chef of the Sansa restaurant (Moscow). — Photos of such pancakes evoke enthusiastic emotions, provoke appetite and desire to try them, so we also added green spinach pancakes with low-salt salmon to the menu on Shrovetide.
Spinach pancakes with salmon with low salt
For those who want to make colored pancakes at home, our interlocutor advises adding natural dye to the liquid part of the dough (milk, water, kefir) and mixing the mixture thoroughly so that the color is evenly distributed. They should be cooked over medium heat until bubbles and a light crust appear. If the temperature of the pan is too high, the color in the pancakes may burn out.
Following the Mediterranean concept of the Sansa restaurant, chef Vysotkov also prepares author's pancakes with mushroom sauce and morels, and for lovers of sweet options he came up with versions with pistachio tres leches and with custard and salted caramel.
Caucasian accent
The flexible texture of the pancakes allows them to be used to prepare experimental versions of some national dishes.
"Since our restaurant is Georgian, I came up with the idea to make khinkali and khachapuri from pancakes," says Vitaly Boymuratov, chef of the Eliso Bistro (Moscow). — The recipe for khinkali is quite simple, but it took some time to tinker with pancake adjaruli. As a result, it turned out to fill ordinary pancakes with cheese filling and give them a boat shape.
Pancake khinkali with mushrooms
Khinkali from fishnet pancakes can be easily prepared on your own, our interlocutor believes. It is necessary to determine their diameter, and make the filling mushroom, meat, shrimp or any of your choice. All that remains is to wrap the pancake in the form of khinkali and tie it on top with green onions or a string of pigtail cheese.
The Japanese Miracle
In Japan, among the many gastronomic holidays and festivals, there is nothing like our Carnival. But the Moscow-based Oshi Izakaya Emperor project decided to fix this and carefully combined Russian traditions with Japanese gastronomy.
"We took a clear Russian dish and put it through the prism of Japanese cuisine, with its attention to detail, balance and texture,— Mikhail Chagai, brand chef at Oshi Izakaya Emperor, told our publication. — So pancakes with eel and creamy unagi sauce, with beef and teriyaki sauce, and with crab and aioli appeared on our pancake menu. It turns out to be an interesting dialogue of cultures, where the familiar sounds in a new way, but remains recognizable.
Pancakes with eel and creamy unagi
The Japanese dessert dorayaki, which also refers to pancakes, is presented as a sweet in izakai. In the classic version, it consists of two soft round sponge cakes, similar to dense pancakes, usually with a paste of red adzuki beans between them.
— To prepare our dorayaki, I use only a few ingredients: milk, flour, eggs, sugar, kefir and baking powder, — says Anush Mkrtumyan, pastry chef at Oshi Izakaya Emperor. — The result is fluffy and soft pancakes with cream based on white chocolate and matcha tea. It seems that everything is simple, but this is exactly what the Japanese philosophy is — simplicity and taste in one dish.
Oriental flavor
Experiments often occur not with pancake batter, but with fillings, because through them you can better demonstrate the gastronomic concept of the project.
—Classic thin pancakes are already a pretty cool product with a good, proven recipe that works on its own," Pavel Klimkin, chef of the Moscow—Istanbul restaurant (Nizhny Novgorod), is convinced. — But with the help of the filling, we can elegantly emphasize the Middle Eastern flavor of our restaurant.
Pancakes with lightly salted trout, zaziki and red caviar
Pancakes in our expert's project are served with labneh and honey from cedar cones, with stuffed chicken and spicy filling with harissa paste (which is imported from Istanbul), as well as with red caviar and zajiki. The menu also includes the author's version of French sweet crepe suzette pancakes with orange sauce with Middle Eastern spices and ice cream made from melted kaymak. This dessert can be repeated at home from thin classic pancakes rolled into triangles. For the sauce, you need to take fresh orange juice, evaporate it to about one third of the original volume, and then add the butter. If desired, you can use spices: cardamom, star anise, cinnamon. After that, the pancakes are simply warmed up in the prepared sauce and served warm with ice cream, which adds the right contrast to the sweet dish.
Asia-Europe
This year's Carnival coincided with the Chinese New Year, which has attracted increased interest among Russians in recent years. This intersection was successfully beaten in the Moscow Anna Bistro project, offering guests pancakes with Peking duck.
— The dish appeared in my head by accident: the supplier made a mistake and brought us hoisin sauce instead of spicy lao gang ma, and at that moment I was preparing a stewed duck for a New Year's rush and thinking about the Pancake menu, — says the chef of the restaurant, Alexander Yefremov. — I've long wanted to make some kind of twist on this dish so that it fits the concept of our restaurant, where European cuisine is complemented by Asian accents.
Pancakes with torn duck in Beijing style
The duck, disassembled into fibers, stewed with oils, sauces and pepper mixed with dried orange, is wrapped not in rice, but in wheat pancakes greased with hoisin sauce from fermented soybeans. To pay tribute to the tradition, they are served with slices of fresh cucumber. The bistro also makes pancakes stuffed with fresh shiitake, fried oyster mushrooms and dried porcini mushrooms in a creamy sauce.
According to our interlocutor, the shape of pancakes and their serving in restaurants mainly depends on the filling with which they are combined. It often happens that the filling tastes good, but is not too visually appealing, and then it is wrapped in a pancake in the manner of cabbage rolls. If the filling looks aesthetically pleasing, then nothing prevents you from putting it on top of a beautifully rolled pancake.
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