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!)