Batter patter from the pancake guy

I’ll be honest here. Even though I’ve flipped more than my share of flapjacks and served many hot stacks o’ pancakes over the decades (I’ve worked for no less than three pancake operations over the years, although one of those chains specialized exclusively in crepes, not that I want to flip out over little details), I had never heard of author Ken Albala until I read Owen Morris’ delicious Fat City post about yesterday’s lecture at the downtown branch of the Kansas City Public Library. There were even pancakes served at the event, although I arrived a little too late for that and it’s just as well — the griddle cakes were served on styrofoam plates with plastic forks, which I won’t do anymore.

But I could have eaten the flapjacks with my fingers (forgoing the messy syrup) as street food, because that was one of the fine points that Albala made during his highly entertaining lecture. While the dish that most Americans love as the modern pancake actually dates back to ancient times — Plato described a fried flat cake and there’s a reference to a treat made of fried batter in a 14th-century cookbook — in international terms, a circle of fried batter can be enjoyed as a Southern Indian dosa, Japan’s savory okonomiyaki — the featured dish at Overland Park’s One Bite restaurant — or Ethiopia’s spongy injera or Cambodian bahn chao.

And although the pancake is beloved in America as a comfort food

because it’s traditionally a “working class breakfast dish” cooked by a

loved one (Mom, Grandmother, the line cook at IHOP), it crosses

cultures to have a place in fine dining: Russian blini served with caviar, for example, or the luxurious crepes Suzette.

A tortilla, however, is not a pancake because it’s made with a lump of dough, not batter. When he was trying to define the “pure, platonic form of pancake” for his book, Albala had to rule out the tortilla, the flatbread and the pita, because the defining element of a pancake is the batter. Now you know! — By Charles Ferruzza