Pancake Day/Shrove Tuesday/Mardi Gras!

We celebrated English Pancake Day on Saturday, because today the boys and I are flying to England - a brief stop over to recover at Ben's parents before flying on to Edinburgh on Wednesday! (I've scheduled this post in advance - it took me AGES to learn how to do that!)It may have been the English day we were celebrating (the French one comes on February 2nd each year), but it was a good reason to get out this French recipe book, which I'd hardly used before.

I wanted to make galettes, the crispy brown savoury pancakes from Brittany, which use the blé noir flour made of buckwheat - I remember Mami writing about buckwheat, so this is a very international alternative to cereal products - I gather it's actually a member of the rhubarb family, which thrived in damp Brittany before the arrival of more damp-tolerant wheats.

My French and Breton friends are now entitled to laugh at my struggles! I did everything right, and ended up with the batter above, which has a very different structure and texture to the normal crèpe batter below.

What I really hadn't taken in was that the nifty little spatula which looks like a window-wiper really isn't an optional extra when working with galette batter. It just doesn't slosh around the pan - you have to lead it everywhere! An early attempt looked like this:Getting better, but getting really messy, too!Nearly the right thinness, now...I remembered seeing the 'window squeegie' spatulas being kept in water, so I did that with my inferior alternative, which helped a bit. I was onto the aperitif by that point...By the end of the batch, I was getting acceptable galettes.Once onto the crèpe batter, I aquired a helper. Son 2 wanted to learn how to swirl the batter round the pan, and got quite good.We ended up with a huge plate of galettes to go with a chili (yum) and another plate of crèpes for pudding, served with lemon, lime or sugar. We warmed them up a batch at a time on my raclette heater - a very, very useful French gadget.So, why on Shrove Tuesday? What is Shrove Tuesday? One thing I do know is that it's the same day as Mardi Gras in France and round the world. I also know that it's a day of feasting and festivals - using up fatty foods in the UK, and eating sweets and dressing up for the Mardi Gras carnivals. Angela and Elizabeth can tell you more...

j

This is all because it's the day before Lent, which has always been a season of fasting in the Christian calendar - it's 40 days of preparation for Easter. I think a time-line may be in order here, says the teacher:
The date of Easter moves around according to the phases of the moon, just like Passover - it's in many ways the same festival. So, this year, tomorrow is the start of Lent. I won't be fasting as such, in fact I don't even know exactly what I will be doing except for learning and sharing with you in the Pause for Lent. Let's see how it goes!