DISH
Flippin' Fools
with Maribeth Maloney
My goodness. It seemed like such a simple mission: taking the kids out for breakfast. But searching for a place that was open turned into mission impossible - Downyflake, Hutch's, Hen House, Even Keel - all closed. Not wanting to return home completely disappointed, we took a few spins around the new rotary for amusement, the insane fun of which was surpassed only by plowing through some big puddles. Then home to make pancakes.

Don't get me wrong - I'm completely capable of making my own. Mighty fine ones, in fact; I make chocolate chip pancakes that are so chocolaty, it takes two days of soaking to get the chocolate mess off the spatula. But sometimes it's nice to let someone else doing the cooking. And weekend breakfast, at least in my house, is one of the few times that there's a quorum among the minors in terms of what they want to eat.

I was raised with the tough love approach to meals: "This is what we're having; if you don't like it, you can go hungry." I like to think of myself as a highly evolved being, one who's learned from experience and progressed. So rather than impose the same stomach-growling dictum on my children, I became a short-order cook, complete with restaurant ordering pads. Weekend pancake breakfasts are one of the limited opportunities I have to scrawl "x2 for the duce at Table 1" on my pad.

My husband's a bit of a pancake aficionado himself. Aside from his manly willingness to incinerate meat on the outdoor grill, pancakes are among the few things he'll attempt. Granted, they're from a boxed mix, but I've still got to give him credit; he's spared the kids the anguish my siblings and I suffered every Saturday morning. That day was "Mom's Day Off," the day she took the train into the city to go shopping, leaving our tearful faces pressed up against the window as she vanished from view. My dad was master of but one dish: Cream of Wheat. I'm not sure he ever actually read the cooking instructions though, specifically the "stir constantly" caveat; his version was lumpy enough not only to bring tears to our eyes but inspiration enough to opt for skipping breakfast altogether and just get straight to the business of chores.

It's too bad Dad didn't at least enlist the help of Nancy Green to make those Saturday morning breakfasts more pleasant. Nancy who? Well, the original Aunt Jemima, of course, and the world's first living trademark.

The Aunt Jemima pancake mix got its name in 1889, after one of the company owners saw a vaudeville performer in "black face" with an apron and a bandana singing a catchy tune called "Aunt Jemima." Miss Green, a talented storyteller who was born a slave in Montgomery County, Kentucky, was not tapped until 1893, at the age of 56, when the product was introduced in St. Joseph, Missouri. Green appeared at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago to demonstrate the mix and serve the results. Her booth drew over 50,000 orders, with police called in to keep the crazed crowds in order. She was proclaimed the "Pancake Queen" and signed to a lifetime contract which lasted until her death in 1923.

But the history of pancakes predates Aunt Jemima by a few hundred years, the first recipe appearing in an English cookbook in the 15th century. By the late 16th century, they had permeated popular culture and managed even to turn up as one of the many food references in the works of the finest writer in the English language: "Of a certain knight that swore by his honour they were good pancakes, and swore by his honour the mustard was naught: now, I'll stand to it, the pancakes were naught and the mustard was good: and yet was not the knight forsworn." What does that mean? I only wish I knew. But it was spoken by the character Touchstone in William Shakespeare's "As You Like It," just after Rosalind calls him a fool.

Pancakes, it seems, are not unfamiliar with being in the company of fools. Particularly among the funloving Anglo-Saxon Christians of the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia, whose solemnly rooted "Shrove Tuesday" went from what was once a humble day of repentance to a pancake-tossing farce.

Also known as "Pancake Day," Shrove Tuesday coincides with what the rest of the world more popularly knows as Mardi Gras ("Fat Tuesday" in French) and dates back centuries in marking the day before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of the liturgical season of Lent. "Shrove" derives from the Old English verb "to shrive," which means to absolve of sins. In addition to "shriveners" (priests) hearing confessions, custom dictated that all fat, butter and eggs be used up in preparation for the 40 days of abstinence preceding Easter. Maybe it was out of a longing to "laissez les bons temps roulez" along with the decidely more secular Mardi Gras mirth-makers, but in 1445, piousness went out the window thanks to a nincompoop and a pancake.

As the story goes, a woman cooking pancakes heard the shriving bell summoning parishioners to confession. Either she was simply devout by nature or she had some seriously nasty sins to get off her chest - she ran right out the door and into church still wearing her apron and carrying a frying pan.

The town of Olney in Buckinghamshire hosts the largest Pancake Day race and, according to current rules, only women wearing a dress and an apron can participate. Each contestant holds a frying pan with a hot, cooking pancake, which must be tossed three times while running a 350-yard dash. The first woman to arrive at the church, serve her pancake to the bell-ringer and be kissed by him is the winner. Bragging rights must be at a premium, because that seems like an awful lot of effort when victory otherwise means pocketing a prayer book.

Should you not have the occasion to find yourself in the English countryside on this year's Pancake Day - Feb. 20 - fret not. If you can get thee to an IHOP, you and yours will be treated to a free short-stack, no antics required. I know of one fellow who'll be flipping his own at home, along with flipping the bird at the notion of ever turning up at one of the country's 1,278 outposts again: John Russo, just a guy who wanted some pancakes.

Upon entering the Quincy, Massachusetts location of the eatery several weeks ago, Mr. Russo was met by a security guard cum bouncer who'd been charged with demanding driver's licenses in exchange for seats in an iron-fisted attempt to stamp out ye olde sophomoric genre of dining, "chew and screw." Russo, a prior victim of identity theft, refused the guard, who already had about 40 licenses in his fist. "You want my license? I'm going for pancakes, I'm not buying the Hope Diamond."

Following some corporate tail-between-the-legs action, Russo received a formal apology from the Glendale, Calif., headquarters of IHOP, which apparently knew nothing of their Quincy franchisee's decidedly inhospitable take on "Come Hungry - Leave Happy."

So I'll be waiting for a response to my ad; I'm hopeful that someone will come to bat for the pancake deprived. But perhaps we should set up border patrol to be on guard against those untrustworthy Quincy-types - there's more money in the tip jars here than what it would cost to feed flapjacks to a

full table of fools. I
      Flippin' good!
  + 1 cup all-purpose flour
  + 1 teaspoon baking powder
  + 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  + 1 tablespoon sugar
  + 1/4 teaspoon salt
  + 1 egg
  + 1 cup buttermilk
  + Butter for griddle or skillet
  + 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate morsels
  Combine first 5 ingredients in a small bowl.
  In a medium-sized bowl, beat egg lightly,
  add buttermilk and stir. Add dry ingredients
  to wet and whisk until combined. Set aside
  for about 20 minutes. Heat griddle or skillet
  over medium heat, add a little butter and
  allow to coat surface, and spoon on batter in
  1/4 cup scoops. Sprinkle chocolate morsels
  over surface of each pancake. When bubbles
  form that no longer disappear, flip pancakes
  and cook other sides for about 1 minute.
  Serve immediately with maple syrup or
  whipped cream. Serves 2.
          CHOCOLATE   CHIP
BUTTERMILK   PANCAKES