I can’t pinpoint exactly when I began making pancakes, but I’m almost certain they were the first dish I attempted to cook on my own. The same way that friends of mine would read comics and then pick up a pen, or take to the weight room after watching the Longhorns fumble a title game, I’d chew a few chunks of a buttermilk pancake from, say, this one diner by Houston’s Hobby Airport and think, Damn, wouldn’t it be wild if this were something I could do? Sometimes, on lazy Saturdays, my family would grab short stacks at the Cracker Barrel just beyond Houston’s city limits. In high school, my friends and I would huddle around tables at IHOP on weekend nights. And the habit endured years later, when I’d sit at one Houston diner or another, in a state of disrepair after a night out, and a stack of flapjacks would seem to be the only remedy.
At home, I started with Aunt Jemima, because it was cheap and delicious and nearly always on hand; but, over time, gradually, I branched out across cuisines, all of them unified by the simple method of frying batter in a pan (the world is, frankly, a very small place). One year, my cooking consisted largely of scallion pancakes—rolled across my tiny countertop and dunked in a makeshift mixture of soy sauce, rice-wine vinegar, and honey—because it was what I could afford at the time. Then came a Swedish-pancake infatuation, followed by a dalliance with kimchi pancakes. Last winter, every week, I fried batches of hotteok—Korean pancakes with a sweet, nut-laden filling—sneaking them into movie theatres to munch on, freezing the extras for lazy afternoons. And, in the spring, sometimes several days a week, my boyfriend and I made okonomiyaki—Japanese cabbage pancakes topped with pork belly and sprinkled with the bonito flakes from Kuromon Market that I’d been rationing out over several seasons.
Pancakes have been a boon to me this past year, especially, as I’ve shifted my home cooking to maximize every haul from the grocery store. At least twice a week, something—anything—in my fridge gets pancaked: a small stack of buttermilk hotcakes makes a solid breakfast one day, and an eggy veggie pancake suffices for the next, followed by a billowing Dutch baby, or a crisp disk of pajeon for a rainy evening. The formula—something wet, something dry, a quick sojourn in some oil—will take you as far as you’d like to go. You might read the recipe closely the first time around, but soon you’ll begin to feel it out on your own. You’ll hear the edges crisp. Your nose will start to recognize the smell of a finished product. Flipping your perfect pancake will start to seem more instinctual than learned, and you’ll—eventually, necessarily—make peace with the fact that the first one in the batch really is always the worst.
When I think of a batter-in-a-frying-pan meal that brings maximal pleasure, now as ever, what comes to mind is my mom’s banana fritters. They’re my lodestar, topped with a little bit of powdered sugar and a splash of condensed milk, from a can that’s likely been long forgotten under the kitchen counter, only to prove clutch at the last minute, instantaneously miracle-worthy. The recipe’s a staple among Jamaican households, and, if you’re even a semi-regular baker, you likely already have on hand all the ingredients you’ll need for a batch. In Enid Donaldson’s “The Real Taste of Jamaica,” she writes, with only modest exaggeration, that “if you can count to one, you will remember the ingredients for these banana fritters.”
Not too long ago, I called my mom to bug her about it. After we took stock of the country’s declining state, in our usual way (in her city, protests over extrajudicial state violence against Black folks were ongoing; in mine, the confirmed cases of COVID-19 were multiplying, while more than a handful of locals were behaving as if there’d never been a pandemic), I asked her, a bit tentatively—because a recipe is a precious thing—about her banana-fritter method. She gave it to me in bits and pieces: make sure the bananas are just ripe enough (“Make sure you pick the right ones”) before mashing them with a fork; sift a bit of flour and stir a beaten egg into the batter (“Don’t overbeat it”); add some spices and a pinch of baking powder (“With your fingers”), unless you don’t have any (“You can skip that if you want to. Use what you have; just stay home”).
I should note that the difference between a pancake and a fritter had never much occurred to me before writing this, perhaps because banana fritters blur the lines. Technically, a pancake is defined by batter; a fritter is defined by what’s dipped into batter, whether vegetables or fruits or leftover meats. A pancake is often griddled with just a bit of fat (your butter, your lard, your oil, whatever); a fritter is properly fried (more tempura than pancake, kakiage being a cardinal example). My mother’s banana fritters involve no dipping—the mashed banana gets incorporated into the batter, just as it would for banana bread. These are round and flat, like pancakes (though smaller—about as wide as a tiny tea coaster), and they get fried up like a fritter. At the end of the day, when your steaming bounty is piled high, deliciousness is the common denominator. A banana fritter, like a pancake, riffs on a melody that couldn’t be simpler, and cooking these, after a while, really is as easy as counting to one.
Banana Fritters
Makes about 8 fritters
Ingredients
- 1 ripe banana
- 2 Tbsp. granulated sugar
- 2 tsp. vanilla extract
- 1 tsp. baking powder
- 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
- ½ tsp. ground nutmeg
- A pinch of salt
- 1 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
- 1 egg, lightly beaten
- About ½ cup neutral oil, for frying
- Confectioner’s sugar (optional), for serving
- Condensed milk (optional), for serving
Directions
1. In a medium bowl, use a fork to mash banana and sugar until the mixture forms a thick, goopy paste.
2. Add vanilla, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt, stirring to combine.
3. Sift flour into the banana mixture, stirring just until combined.
4. Add beaten egg to the banana mixture, stirring until thoroughly combined.
5. Set a large frying pan over medium-high heat and add enough oil to thinly coat the bottom. (Flick some batter into the pan; if it sizzles, the oil is hot enough.)
6. Working in batches, add batter by the heaping spoonful, several at a time, taking care not to crowd the pan.
7. Cook until the edges of your fritters start to bubble, about 3 minutes. Flip and cook for another 2 minutes or so. Don’t flatten them.
8. Place finished fritters on a plate lined with paper towels. Cover them with a kitchen towel to keep them warm.
9. To serve, dust fritters with confectioner’s sugar and drizzle with condensed milk, if you like.
