Delicious UK - (02)February 2020

a good rant.

130 deliciousmagazine.co.uk

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ARMSTRONG

ROBERTS

T

here’s a Pancake Day display in

my local supermarket. Lined up

on the shelves are ‘pancake pans’,

bottles of ‘pancake mix’, plastic lemons

filled with something that was –

presumably – once lemon juice, jars of

chocolate spread and packs of ready-made

crepes. You need to really hunt around the

store to find the only items necessary to

make pancakes: flour, eggs, milk.

For carb lovers and connoisseurs of

low-budget fried things, Pancake Day is

a highlight of the culinary calendar. It

involves no gifts, no expensive outlay, no

weeks of planning, just a frying pan and

ingredients you almost certainly have in

your cupboards. Yet Shrove Tuesday has

been hijacked by the marketeers. They’re

trying to convince us that making

pancakes is somehow a tricky endeavour

that requires pre-made mixes and

specialist equipment. It doesn’t.

Why does this matter? These products

seem innocuous but I think they discourage

people from cooking at home. If something

as simple as making pancakes requires

special mixes, then doesn’t that make the

whole concept of cooking meals from

scratch seem a bit, well, scary?

Plus, if you convince shoppers that they

can’t make a batter themselves, then you

can sell them a mix chock-full of additives

for 16 times the price per kilo as a bag of

plain flour (plain flour from my local

supermarket costs 40p/kg. A bottle of

pancakemixcosts£6.45/kg).It’sfullof

grim extras, too. Mmmmm, I love the

smell of whey powder, palm oil, dextrose

and dried egg yolk in the morning.

Ironically, Pancake Day began life as a

day of thrift. Shrove Tuesday marks the last

day in the Christian calendar before Lent.

Worshippers were encouraged to eschew

rich foods such as eggs and milk for Lent,

so whisking up pancakes was about using

up what was in the cupboard, not racing

to the supermarket to buy new stuff.

Perhaps Pancake Day’s religious roots

don’t matter any more. The batter treats

are so popular these days that, when I

worked for a well-known cooking website,

it crashed on Pancake Day because so

many thousands of people were Googling

‘how to make pancakes’. (You can,

however, simply turn to p102 for the

delicious. pancake-making masterclass.)

Whether you like your pancakes with

lemon and sugar, chocolate and chopped

nuts or bacon and maple syrup, know this:

you don’t need packet mix, you don’t need

those ready-made scotch pancakes (I’d

rather eat a bath sponge) and you certainly

don’t need an electric crepe maker.

Let’s return Pancake Day to its origins as

a low-fi, low-budget occasion. Let’s use it

as an opportunity to teach children how

to cook – to get them measuring, whisking

and flipping. Let’s spread the word about

how sometimes the best dishes can be the

simplest and quickest ones to cook. And

let’s stay well away from the bottles of

dextrose and dried egg yolk.

Pancake mix costs

16 times as much per kilo

as plain flour

DoyouagreewithKatyordo

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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