Page 132 - Delicious - UK (February 2020)

a good rant.

Flippin’ ’eck, says Katy Salter – how can something
so basic be marketed with complicated kits, plastic

lemons and weird additives? It’s time we rediscovered
the beautiful simplicity of Shrove Tuesday

here’s a Pancake Day display in scratch seem a bit, well, scary? worked for a well-known cooking website,
my local supermarket. Lined up Plus, if you convince shoppers that they it crashed on Pancake Day because so
T on the shelves are ‘pancake pans’, can’t make a batter themselves, then you many thousands of people were Googling
bottles of ‘pancake mix’, plastic lemons can sell them a mix chock-full of additives ‘how to make pancakes’. (You can,
filled with something that was – for 16 times the price per kilo as a bag of however, simply turn to p102 for the
presumably – once lemon juice, jars of plain flour (plain flour from my local delicious. pancake-making masterclass.)
chocolate spread and packs of ready-made supermarket costs 40p/kg. A bottle of Whether you like your pancakes with
crepes. You need to really hunt around the lemon and sugar, chocolate and chopped
store to find the only items necessary to nuts or bacon and maple syrup, know this:
Pancake mix costs
make pancakes: flour, eggs, milk. you don’t need packet mix, you don’t need
For carb lovers and connoisseurs of 16 times as much per kilo those ready-made scotch pancakes (I’d
low-budget fried things, Pancake Day is rather eat a bath sponge) and you certainly
as plain flour
a highlight of the culinary calendar. It don’t need an electric crepe maker.
involves no gifts, no expensive outlay, no pancake mix costs £6.45/kg). It’s full of Let’s return Pancake Day to its origins as
weeks of planning, just a frying pan and grim extras, too. Mmmmm, I love the a low-fi, low-budget occasion. Let’s use it
ingredients you almost certainly have in smell of whey powder, palm oil, dextrose as an opportunity to teach children how
your cupboards. Yet Shrove Tuesday has and dried egg yolk in the morning. to cook – to get them measuring, whisking
been hijacked by the marketeers. They’re Ironically, Pancake Day began life as a and flipping. Let’s spread the word about
trying to convince us that making day of thrift. Shrove Tuesday marks the last how sometimes the best dishes can be the
pancakes is somehow a tricky endeavour day in the Christian calendar before Lent. simplest and quickest ones to cook. And
that requires pre-made mixes and Worshippers were encouraged to eschew let’s stay well away from the bottles of
specialist equipment. It doesn’t. rich foods such as eggs and milk for Lent, dextrose and dried egg yolk.
Why does this matter? These products so whisking up pancakes was about using PHOTOGRAPH: GETTY IMAGES/H ARMSTRONG ROBERTS
seem innocuous but I think they discourage up what was in the cupboard, not racing
Do you agree with Katy or do
people from cooking at home. If something to the supermarket to buy new stuff. you take a different view? Tell us
as simple as making pancakes requires Perhaps Pancake Day’s religious roots at info@deliciousmagazine.co.uk
special mixes, then doesn’t that make the don’t matter any more. The batter treats and we’ll print the best replies
whole concept of cooking meals from are so popular these days that, when I

130 deliciousmagazine.co.uk