MEL BUTTLE

“Cooking pancakes shatters my selfesteem”

Pancakes are small, needy, things that aren’t worth the time and energy on a weekend morning. Standing by the stove for what feels like at least an hour flipping over these tiny circles of pale disappointment, is no way to start off a Saturday.

Pancakes and I don’t get on, we’re like magpies and cyclists, or chefs and packet rice. I hate making pancakes, and I’m convinced that they hate me back.

Pancakes are my Achilles heel. I’m good at many things, I can always find the cheapest toilet paper at the shops, I’m great at choosing the quickest security line at the airport, but cooking pancakes shatters my self-esteem.

I’ve come out publicly before as being a shocking pancake cook; I’ve backed this up by plastering my insipid handiwork on social media where people are surprisingly kind and have offered their own, supposedly foolproof recipes for me to try. I know you think your recipe is easy and reliable but, in the hands of a monster like me, it stands no chance.

I don’t think it’s the recipe, or the pan, I think it’s that I hate cooking pancakes and that frequency radiates from me and into the batter.

Is there something you just can’t cook? For my mum it’s rice and fish respectively, she’d never dare to try them together, by her own multiple admissions “I’m no Geoff Jansz so don’t expect too much, please”. Mum would over-think rice, she’d wash it off under the tap in a colander after it was cooked, then heat it back up over the pot it was cooked in.

Mum always acted like cooking rice was a real imposition, “How about we serve it on some boiled potato or pasta instead of rice?” she’d suggest. Of course, as a kid, I didn’t want Thai green curry on potatoes. I’d not seen that on any of the food shows I watched religiously, not even on Ready Steady Cook where anything goes.

I wanted it on rice, like I’d seen Neil Perry do. She’d try and put me off by saying, “It’ll take 25 minutes at least, do you still want rice?” Of course I did, I wasn’t hungry anyway, I’d had half a packet of Teevee snacks while I watched Degrassi High in my room.

During the handful of occasions in my life Mum did cook fish, she’d want me standing by to advise when it was cooked, even though I was only 11. I knew no more than her about fish cookery, but I was able to parrot back things I’d heard Rick Stein say. “Is it flaking? Is it soft to the touch?”. Mum would reply, “I think so, but let’s leave it in a bit longer, I’d rather have it overdone, than underdone”.

I reckon if she was ever to get a tattoo, that saying would be a worthy contender to be emblazoned across her shoulder blades in Times New Roman font.

I reckon pancakes are my rice and fish and the less I make them the harder they get each time. It’s a real cycle of destruction.

With regards to my pancake issues, I can hear the shouting from here: Yes, I heat the pan up, yes, I grease the pan, yes, I let the mixture sit. No, I don’t overwork it, no, I don’t flip them too early. There’s just no hope for me.

I await your wrath and advice.