cooking @ home

This is one of those meals I had way long ago. It was my first big vacation when I was out on my own. It fell at the end of September, top of October and my initial choice of the Bahamas looked to be too shaky with hurricane season. So I took my second choice first: Santa Fe-Taos area of New Mexico. Why? What’s not to love? American Indian pueblos, a church bell cast before the Pilgrims landed, Indian art, cowboy art, the home of Georgia O’Keefe, southwestern cooking, adobe houses, you name it.

It was also the first vacation I took solo, and learned the art of eating by one’s self. And one of the things they all suggest for dining alone is to slowly savor the food. Maybe that’s why I remember one of those meals, this one, so well. Maybe that’s in part why I became a “foodie” and then got into cooking. Anyhow, this is my best effort recreation of that awesome breakfast I had one day in some restaurant in Santa Fe. I think it turned out pretty delish if I say so myself.

Before we jump in, a few words of advice. I’d never worked with jam, jelly before, ok, I have, with cookies, especially raspberry thumbprint cookies. But not quite in this manner as a fruit sauce. When I was trying to reduce it down and it wouldn’t get thicker I initially used a touch of cornstarch. That made it perfectly the thickness I wanted, and then I put the pan to the back of the burner and worked on the meat side (sausage) and the pancakes themselves.

Long story short, I pick up the pan to find it had cooled back to a thick jelly. Oh no! I’m not used to working with sauces that thicken when cooked, but thicken when heated. Thinking back I should have known that. Not from my own experience, but things I’ve heard and read about. In any event I saved it, that first version, by adding two tablespoons of OJ. The second time around I did what you read in the recipe below: reduced, added no thickner, put it to the side while still very watery looking, came back to it and was fine sauce.

One more thing, there are a variety of ways to make this sauce with fresher ingredients. As said, I used jam. You could instead use frozen rasberries or fresh ones. If you do, you will need to add sugar or simple syrup and macerate them with a liquour or something. In this specific instance, I purposely didn’t go fresher as I really wanted something to use up the jar of jam I had left over from baking. Enjoy.

Ricotta Pancakes with Raspberry Sauce
©2007 Harry Kenney

ingredients:

batter:

2 cups whole-milk ricotta
2 eggs
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsps oil (vegetable, peanut, etc)
2/3 cup of milk

sauce:

1 cup of raspberry jam (seedless)
1/3 cup orange juice

Place the sauce ingredients into a small pan and mix. Keep low and stir often or it will quickly rise and overflow. Reduce somewhat. Note, you will take this off the heat while the mixture looks much too thin; it will thicken considerably after you have removed it from the heat. If too thick when you come back after making pancakes, add a tablespoon of the OJ and mix and heat up a bit.

Blend all the batter ingredients together. A tablespoon works fine, but your choice. Spoon 1/4 cup of batter into frying pan until golden brown and flip. 3-4 minutes per side. Makes 8 pancakes. Drizzle the rasberry syrup on and across the pancakes. Note this concentration goes a long way. Get too liberal with the sauce and it may be too sweet. Start out more sparingly and you can always add more to the plate.

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