FIFINONO – a blog about cultural exploration

History of pancakes

Pancakes have been around for a longggg time! Analyses of starch grains on 30,000-year-old grinding tools suggest that Stone Age cooks were making flour out of cattails and ferns. The result may have been a little different from the modern pancake, but the idea was the same: a flat cake, made from batter and fried.

In the US, pancakes are often eaten for breakfast with butter and syrup. FIFINONO’s want to cook some different kinds of pancakes around the world. What are the similarities and differences?

Let’s start with… French Crêpe!!

C’est parti!

1. French: Crêpe

They are so thin and delicate and can be filled with pretty much anything: Sweet like fruit, Nutella, or savory with various meats and cheese. FIFI’s favorite is Crêpe jambon fromage oeuf! (Ham + cheese + egg).

Voila! It took us a few tries to get the thin layer. We weren’t able to fold them in the end because FIFI put too many ingredients in the middle. Well, it’s still super delicious!

2. Okonomiyaki

The next one is Okonomiyaki, this one took us a few attempts to make. there are so many ingredients in this pancake it almost feels like a pizza. The name is derived from the word okonomi, meaning “how you like” or “what you like”, and yaki meaning “cooked”There are two kinds of Okonomiyaki, Osaka-style or Hiroshima-style. Since we are more familiar with Osaka, this is the style we are going with!

Itadakimasu!!

3. Jianbing

At FIFI’s hometown Jinan, China, we also have our own style “Pancakes”. The most common ones are Jian bing and Cong you bing. It is almost bizarre to think our traditional childhood dish as pancakes, but once we look at the process and ingredients, they are indeed “same same but different.”

Jianbing:

Jianbing (煎饼)  is of our most popular street breakfasts in China, it is quite similar to crepes – extremely thin, but usually crisper. The batter is usually made of wheat and grain flour, eggs then topped with different fillings and sauces.

Cong You Bing

Cong you bing (葱油饼), literally means scallion oil pancake. This is made from dough instead of batter, and are usually thicker. The pan-fried process gives it crisp edges and a chewy texture. Typical fillings are scallion, but some of us replace it with other veggies such as chives.

4. Injera

From NONO’s neighbor country Ethiopia, there’s also a very special kind of “Pancake” – Injera. It is sour fermented and made out of teff flour – an ancient grain from the highlands of Ethiopia. It also has a slightly spongy texture, which makes it even more unique. It is almost used as an eating utensil to wrap various stews and salads. There is little written or known about teff’s origin, but some believe that the production of teff dates back as far as 4000 BC! We almost feel like tasting history!

The exploration of world pancakes is not over! Maybe most of the countries have their own unique “pancake”. FIFI and NONO are full now.

It’s fascinating to find these similarities in different cultural cuisines! What kind of “pancakes” do you have in your culture? Leave a comment!