Friday, May 29, 2009

Banana Cardamom Pancakes

I miss Oznot's Dish.
It has been closed for a few years now, but I'm no less pissed off about it. Marsha and I used to eat brunch there regularly. Usually I had the Moroccan steak and eggs, with the most wonderful roasted potato home fries on the side and a little bit of Sriracha hot sauce (my introduction to the stuff). Marsha would get the cardamom french toast with bananas. Then, one day, Oznot's Dish was closed. Gone forever. I never found out why. When I think about the time and work that must have gone into hand-setting all of the glass mosaic tiles that decorated the place I get really agitated, because someone probably destroyed it all in one day. Desert Candy has a suitable replacement for the french toast:

--2 large Eggs
--2 cups Buttermilk
--6 tbsp Unsalted Butter, melted
--1 1/2 cups All-purpose Flour
--1/4 cup Sugar
--2 tsp Baking Soda
--1/2 tsp Sea Salt
--1/8 tsp Cardamom
--2 large Bananas, diced

In a medium bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients (eggs, buttermilk, melted butter). In a small bowl, mix the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking soda, cardamom and salt). Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, stirring until just combined — don't worry if there are a few lumps. Stir in the bananas (Don't be tempted to smash the bananas into the batter, these work best when the bananas are distinct within the pancakes, soft compliments to the fluffy batter). Lightly grease a large sauté pan or griddle with the nonstick spray or butter. Heat the pan until hot and then spoon out 1/4 cup of batter per pancake. Cook the pancakes until the tops look dull and a few of the bubbles pop, about 3 minutes. Turn the pancakes over and cook for another minute.

1 comment:

clairz said...

I'm so sorry that place is gone. I'm pretty sure that we went there once with you. Surely, you don't mean that the building itself is gone? I remember just looking and looking at the beautiful walls. And loving the delicious food. It was a great experience for us New Hampshire people--coming out the woods and into the high civilization of NYC.

I really like the Desert Candy blog. Glad you are poking around there. The author, Mercedes, recently lost her mom and it seemed like hundreds of her readers sent their sympathy, even though they'd never actually met her in person. (Perhaps meeting people in person is a thing of the past?)