CSA Week 3: Too Many Recipes for Just One Post

I'm short on time and long on ideas for this week's bounty, so I'm gonna blurt things out here as I think of them. Our share this week included a bunch of scallions, which I use all the time so I was happy to have them. If you're not such the scallion freak, try using them in these pancakes: they are deliciously buttery, mildly onion-y, and one batch will use up your whole bunch of scallions.

I've had this recipe for ~15 years, in a binder of full of recipes clipped from various cooking magazines. Unfortunately, I didn't make a note of the original source, but based on the style of font in the clipping I think it came from Gourmet magazine. The original recipe suggests serving these pancakes as a side dish with fried chicken, but we usually just eat them for breakfast with maple syrup. Leftover pancakes can be frozen.

Green Onion Pancakes
Source: Gourmet magazine, I think….

2/3 cup finely chopped scallions
1 recipe cornmeal pancake batter (see below), reducing the sugar from 2 tablespoons to 1 teaspoon
Bacon fat for frying [or you can use oil, but they are sooo much better with bacon grease!]

1. Stir the scallion into the pancake batter. Heat 1/8” depth of fat in a heavy skillet until hot, but not smoking. Fry tablespoons of the batter in batches for 1 minute or until the undersides are golden. Turn the pancakes, fry them for 1 minute more. Makes about 24 pancakes [I think it makes a bit more than that, I can’t remember though…]


Cornmeal pancake batter

1 cup cornmeal
½ cup all-purpose flour [can be whole wheat flour]
2 tablespoons sugar [can be omitted altogether, if you prefer less sweet pancakes]
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
2 large eggs, beaten lightly
1 ¼ cups buttermilk [buttermilk tastes the best but you can substitute ¾ cup plain yogurt plus ½ cup milk]
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled

1. Sift together the cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, soda, and salt. In a separate bowl, beat together the eggs, buttermilk, and butter. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until the batter is smooth. Let the batter stand at room temperature for 10 minutes.