Table & Travel

One of my great joys in the veg­etable gar­den this year has been dig­ging pota­toes. We planted five bar­rels of pota­toes, includ­ing Red Pon­tiac, La Ratte, Yukon Gold, and Red Nor­land. I also planted some organic pota­toes I got at Whole Foods that sprouted very quickly so I threw them in the ground.

Yes­ter­day, I decided to have a good break­fast, which included pota­toes. So out I went to the gar­den and dug a few beau­ties, which were quickly diced and into a fry­ing pan not ten min­utes after they left the ground. Served with organic apple-smoked bacon and poached brown eggs, the were deli­cious, crisp on the out­side and creamy within—brilliant, as chef Jamie Oliver would say.

A cou­ple of weeks ago Vicki and I were down for the first foot­ball game of the year at Cal and the morn­ing after the game we revis­ited the Cock-a-Doodle Cafe with our friends Dan and Sandy. We hadn’t been there since last year, but the food was still out­stand­ing. Once again, Vicki had the Lemon Ricotta pan­cakes and loved them so much I decided to try them at home. I used a recipe from Giada De Lau­ren­tis and var­ied it a lit­tle bit, adding blue berries and vanilla, rather than lemon zest. The result was two huge yum­mie pan­cakes served with a cou­ple of slices of organic apple smoked bacon. Vicki was so anx­ious to eat it, she took a bite before I could take the picture!

Here’s the recipe:

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Ricotta Pan­cakes

Prep Time: 10 min
Cook Time: 30 min Level: Easy
Serves: 4 serv­ings (16 pancakes)

Ingre­di­ents:

2 cups water
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup honey
1 1/2 tea­spoons vanilla extract
2 cups pan­cake and waf­fle mix (rec­om­mended: Krusteaz)
1 cup whole milk ricotta cheese
2/3 cup frozen blue­ber­ries
Melted butter

Direc­tions:

Stir 1/3 cup of water and sugar in a small saucepan over medium heat until the sugar dis­solves, about 5 min­utes. Stir in the honey. Set aside and keep the honey syrup warm.

Using a rub­ber spat­ula, stir the remain­ing 1 2/3 cups of water and vanilla in a large bowl. Add the pan­cake mix and stir just until moist­ened but still lumpy. Stir in the ricotta into the pan­cake mix­ture, then stir gen­tly to incor­po­rate the ricotta but main­tain a lumpy bat­ter. Fold in the blueberries.

Heat a grid­dle over medium heat. Brush with the melted but­ter. Work­ing in batches, spoon 1/4 cup of bat­ter onto the grid­dle for each pan­cake. Cook until golden brown, about 3 min­utes per side. Serve with the honey syrup.

Recipe cour­tesy Giada De Laurentis