Like tea in a fine china cup, cheese when it’s grated and chocolate on a Tuesday when you started your diet on Monday, food just tastes better when it’s shared. I feel a little cheated when we go out for dinner and I don’t have at least two bites of my husband’s food (Tip: This handy habit also decreases your chances of getting order envy). So when we were asked last Sunday to cater for breakfast at the beach, I decided to haul out my Grandad’s old Mongolian Grill and get everyone to cook their own. I used to love the evenings when we did stirfry at Oupa’s house on this splendid contraption. I would scoop up spoons full of bacon, beef and chicken and top it all with two julienned carrots and a bean sprout and declare that I was eating my veggies. Not being Chinese, no one ever got the actual stir fry just right, but that didn’t seem to matter. There was just something about the “Check hers out!” and “Bru, I don’t think it’s supposed look like that!” that somehow made the complete lack of authentic taste of the food irrelevant. It didn’t really matter what they ate, everyone just loved the competition. I was sure the same could be achieved with some batter and a bit of bacon and I was not disappointed. There will always be that one guy who puts the cheese in too early. “Bru, I don’t think it’s supposed to look like that!”.
- 2 cups cake flour
- 2 eggs
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 2 tablespoons melted butter
- 4 teaspoons baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 cup milk
- Cooking oil
- 2 packets bacon, chopped
- 1 punnet brown mushrooms, chopped
- 2 cups cheese, grated
- I bunch spring onions, sliced
- Any other filling that takes your fancy (Feta and sundried tomatoes and a few fresh herbs would add a nice Mediterranean twist. Ooh, and salmon, cream cheese and caviar if you want to get all fancy!)
- Eggs
- Sauce to serve. We used a creamy mushroom, but Hollandaise would be fantastic!
- For the flapjack batter, whisk the eggs and sugar together.
- Add ½ cup of milk and butter to the egg mixture.
- Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together and add to the egg mixture.
- Add the remaining milk and mix to a smooth batter.
- If necessary, add a little water to the batter if it’s too thick.
- Now oil and fire up the grill. To cook the flapjacks, each person fries whatever filling combination they like. Once cooked, you can flatten the ingredients on the grill into more or less a flat, round shape and then pour the batter over, but I found the best way is to scoop the cooked ingredients into a bowl, add the batter and cheese and then scoop spoonfuls back onto the hot griddle. When bubbles start forming on the top, flip over, cook the other side for a few moments and serve with the sauce and a fried egg.