08.01.2007 vonFranz

Rezept in Deutsch

When I was a little boy I often spent my holidays at my relative’s farm in the Eifel area near Cologne.
I remember not only some countryside adventures I had to endure, but also a giant plate of those delicious buckwheat pancakes in the middle of an old kitchen table.
As you can see I was already fond of good food at this young age.

The farmer’s wife baked the buckwheat pancakes as a garnish to her gorgeous fresh vegetable soup. The pancake stack was quartered and everyone took his slice, rolled it and ate it out of the hand.
As dessert we often had some soured milk – freshly milked and immediately placed in a big bowl to rest in the cool buttery until it turned thick and stiff.
Then the soured milk’s bowl was also placed in the table’s center and everyone helped themselves using a big spoon. I always spared some pancake crumbs to have them with the soured milk, and if there had not been some legendary cooks who were quicker than I the Blinis with Creme fraiche recipe might be have been invented by a young boy sitting at an Eifel farmer’s table …

I am sending the recipe Vegetable soup with coffee-flavored buckwheat pancakes as my contribution to the HotM 11 “Soup” – event  hosted by Joanna’s Food.

Lately, there were a couple of vegetable leftovers in my fridge – an opportunity to cook a good vegetable soup. But this time I wanted it to be a very special one, so first I made a luscious vegetable stock.

Vegetable stock
Category: Basic cooking, soup
Serves: 6 portions

Ingredients:
300 g carrots
2 leeks, white parts only
100 g celeriac
50 g fennel
250 g shallots
2 cloves of garlic (unpeeled)
1 Bouquet garni
250 ml dry white wine
10 g white pepper

Recipe source:
Michel Roux “nur das Beste”

Preparation:
Dice all vegetables and let them simmer in wine and 2 litres of water for about 45 min. , skim if necessary.
Drain the soup and squeeze out the vegetables slightly.

This is how to continue:
Dice some carrots, onions and celeriac into bite-sized pieces, sautee them in olive oil and deglaze with some vegetable stock, season with salt. Now, fill in all kinds of your preferred vegetables one after the other: potatoes, pumpkin, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, string beans, fennel, cauliflower and everything you have in your house. Finish with leek and parsley, season with salt, freshly ground pepper, nutmeg and chili pepper – done.

It’s up to your taste to sprinkle some olive oil over the soup or add some Parmesan cheese.
This time I wanted it pure but with buckwheat pancakes.

I chose a traditional Münsterland region recipe in which they use cold coffee for the pancake’s batter, which is a good idea because the roasty flavor of the coffee makes a very special but harmonious spice for this batter. Some people in Münsterland also add the coffee grounds and serve the pancakes with fried bacon, turnips syrup and pumpernickel (a very dark and juicy bread) or with farmer’s bread and salad. Down south in Rhineland people like a very luscious buckwheat batter with many eggs inside but also coffee and they serve it with roasted onion rings.

For my Eifel recipe I picked some things from here and there.

Buckwheat pancakes Eifel style
Category: pancakes, garnish
Serves: 6-8 portions

Ingredients:
250 g buckwheat flour
1/4 liter cold coffee
125 ml milk
2 eggs
1 pinch of salt
1/4 Liter sparkling water

Preparation:
Beat the eggs and stir in cold coffee, milk and salt, let the mixture rest for one hour.
Then dilute the batter with the sparkling water.

Heat a pan with some olive oil, pour in some batter until the pan’s ground is lightly covered and bake the pancake on both sides.

Stack all baked pancakes in the warm oven.

I can’t remember if they used cold coffee for the pancake’s batter in those old Eifel days but it could very well have been so because my version tasted as good to me as those pancakes did nearly 50 years ago.

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