Sourdough Pancakes with Blood Orange Lemon Curd

First of all, these aren’t my pancakes but according to the creator of this recipe (and this one), “The content has really gone downhill since the latkes. My whole write-up was conceptually solid, you need to practice.” So I’m writing about Bria’s pancakes because she doesn’t know how to: follow a recipe, remember what ingredients she used, measure anything or leave food to cook instead of removing it from the heat a million times.

It is also impossible to get through a meal without something ending up all over the walls, the floor, or any light-colored clothing within a five mile radius. Someone has to tie it all together into a working “recipe” and apparently, that’s me.

With that said, what Bria is good at is: not following a recipe, insulting me and fermenting things. On any given day, just about everything in Bria’s apartment is actively fermenting. From Kombucha, ginger beer, fruit and her hair (she hasn’t washed it in two months how does it look that good wtf), she’s effectively a yeast wrangler of epic proportions. By merely walking into her place, you’re contributing to her ecosystem of live cultures with your unique “flora” and I have no doubt that she’s into it.

Where yeast is welcome, gluten is not and so these pancakes are…gluten-free. As it turns out, gluten-free sourdough used in pancakes are good af. Out of all of the gluten-free pancakes I’ve had (like two), these were my favorite. Sourdough is dope.

We got a little excited about having a bowl of sourdough starter and decided to do pancakes two ways; one batch using all-purpose gluten-free flour and one using coconut flour. Let’s go ahead and complicate things. If you’ll notice, the ingredients and instructions below are as long as your last CVS receipt, because there is no actual recipe here. It’s an amalgamation of produce from a CSA that needs to be used or something fermented that’s going to waste. This also means there are countless dishes and tiny jars being dirtied for me to wash while being told not to wash them.

I have to assume the tall boy of Miller High Life waiting for me when I got to Bria’s place was an advance on an apology for forcing me to endure what felt like days worth of mixing, additions, supervising a child with a sharp knife and eventually getting to put actual batter into a hot pan.

Seriously, that blood orange lemon curd was a real rollercoaster ride. I got a text saying there was going to be lemon curd to put on top of the pancakes and I’m thinking, “fuck yes.” Then I get another text saying blood oranges were getting involved.

I thought maybe she was having Blood Orange over to play some of my favorite songs while being fed pancakes, but it was just the actual fruit being added to the never-ending list of stuff to include.

From there, things spiraled. I may have even blacked out at one point. I honestly have no idea what went into the final lemon curd. The list below is just a guess and is probably missing more than half of the total ingredients. It tasted really fucking good and I guess that’s all that matters.

When the dust settled, we had two sets of pancakes covered in a very bright colored lemon curd, topped with caramelized pistachios. Neither tasted like gluten-free pancakes and could have passed for gluten-filled. The sourdough did a killer job of giving these pancakes a nice rise and an excellent texture and, most importantly, the flavor was spot-on. There was a slight hint of sweetness accompanied by the familiar bready, yeasty sourdough notes. The lemon curd brought the tang and the pistachios, of course, brought the crunchy texture.

Personally, I liked the all-purpose gluten-free batch. They most closely resembled a standard pancake in all aspects and who doesn’t like a straight-forward panned cake. Always the contrarian, Bria liked the coconut batch. I could sense I was being provoked but didn’t bite. Sometimes you just have to ignore those who seek to destroy you and take the higher road. So I cleaned her kitchen while she took a puzzling amount of blurry pictures of her feet with my camera.

Finally, and just because, here’s a short and incomplete list of some of my favorite basketball players from the 90s. They are in no particular order (except for Penny Hardaway, because I was obsessed). Please note that this isn’t a “best players of the 90s” list and isn’t up for debate. Maybe in a future post I’ll include my least favorite players of the 90s, in which John Starks and Patrick Ewing and his sweaty knee pads (maybe just that entire Knicks team) would be present. Enjoy.

• Anfernee Hardaway
• Shawn Kemp
• Scottie Pippen
• Joe Dumars
• John Stockton
• Dennis Rodman
• Larry Johnson
• Spud Webb
• Gary Payton
• Dan Majerle
• Cliff Robinson

*Jordan excluded because it goes without saying, but he’s not on the top of my list and definitely not before Scottie Pippen.

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