Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Polenta Pancakes w/ Pear + Clementine, & Vanilla Bean Compote


Someone around here loves pancakes; someone else is repelled by them. The dedicated pancake fan is committed to whipping up a stack just about every Sunday, so she is always searching for a new recipe that will tempt TCV to cross to the other side, if only on the weekends: a way-overboard breakfast of starch, butter, and maple syrup. Chocolate chip pancakes recently failed as a lure, but here is the latest try, which was slightly more successful:

Polenta Pancakes (recipe adapted from newyorktimes.com):
½ cup Delta Grind cornmeal
pinch of salt
1 tablespoon raw sugar
1 cup AP flour
1/2 cup wheat flour
1 tsp. baking powder
2 eggs
1¼ cups milk
olive oil for skillet

Whisk cornmeal with 1 1/2 cups of water and a pinch of salt. Bring to a boil, whisk, lower heat, and whisk for a few more minutes until it is thickened. Set aside. Whisk dry ingredients and wet ingredients separately, then stir together until just combines. Brush skillet or double-burner pan with olive oil. Set to medium heat and pour on batter for pancakes. When they bubble, flip them.

Pear, Clementine, and Vanilla Bean Compote:
2 yellow pears
3 clementines
1 tbsp. vanilla sugar or raw sugar
half a vanilla bean

Peel ripe yellow pears and dice them. Squeeze the juice and pulp of 3 clementines over them. Add sugar. Slice open and scrape out half of a vanilla bean into the mix, and then throw it in and stir. Heat for one to two minutes. Pour over polenta pancakes along with a pat of butter and a drizzle of maple syrup.

(Oh, yeah -- we recently took advantage of a really good deal on vanilla beans on amazon.com -- just $15 for an entire bag!)


2 comments:

Toni @ Imperfect Pregnancy said...

i love polenta. This will be showing up on a Sunday brunch table very soon.

Dani said...

Oh I want to try these, I have some polenta in the pantry.