All About the Oats

So when we were in Atlanta last week, we went to brunch at the Flying Biscuit Café, and I had these fantastic oatmeal pancakes. It turns out the café has a cookbook available, but I didn't find that out until we returned to D.C., so I had to dig around online to see if I could find a recipe that looks good.

On the Scotland.com cuisine forum, I found one thread that looks promising.

Converting things to U.S. standard measurements:

• 1 scant cup plain flour


• 1 cup oatmeal


• 1/4 scant cup sugar


• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda


• 1 teaspoon cream of tartar


• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon OR ginger


• pinch salt


• 1 egg, lightly beaten


• 3/4 cup milk^*

Mix all dry ingredients. Add beaten egg and mix well. Add milk and mix until "mixture looks like thick cream" (a little additional milk may be required to get the desireconsistencycy). Using a heavy-bottomed frying pan or griddle, place spoonfuls of mixture in pan/griddle, cook on both sides until golden brown. Makes four large pancakes.

^*The original recipe didn't give a specific amount; 3/4 cup worked well, but I could see using a tablespoon more or less depending upon the amount of liquid in the egg and/or how thirsty the oats are. Also, in retrospect, I wonder if heating or scalding the milk would improve the batter.

In the Scotland.com thread, serving suggestions included maple syrup, Lyle's golden syrup, jam, and butter.

As part of the thread the discussion also came up about what type of oatmeal to use. Babz, the recipe originator, said she used "medium oatmeal," but that was of little help to me (or one poster from the U.S. who asked what kinds of oats were used and the reply came: "It is not oats that I use, it is oatmeal"). Elsewhere in the thread, options seemed to be either the "medium oatmeal" or "pin oats."

Digging around a bit more, Celtic Traders has a good breakdown of different types of oats/oatmeal. It looks like Babz was using rolled oats (the "regular" stuff from Quaker, or maybe quick oats); the pin oats are steel-cut oats (like McCann's Irish oatmeal).

Tonight, we're having friends over. Evelin's making a blueberry-lemon pie, and I'm making some french vanilla ice cream to go with it. For the main meal: spinach-avocado-grapefruit salad and a Levantine pilaf from Najmieh Batmanglij's Silk Road Cooking. Thinking of that recipe, here's an interesting article about rice dishes and food presentation/design.