Mouthgasmic Almond Flour Pancakes

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons Salted Butter from Grass Fed Dairy Cows
• 1/2 cup Coconut Milk
• 1/2 piece tahitian vanilla bean
• 1/2 teaspoon Dried Valencia Orange Rind
• 1 teaspoon Chestnut Honey
• 1 cup Almond flour
• 1 pinch Saigon Cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder not paleo. sue me.
• 2 large eggs
• 1/4 teaspoon Sea salt
• beef tallow or leaf lard for cooking

Directions

First off, this is not ‘Gourmet on a Budget’ it’s meant as way giving the best of all worlds: the basic, inherent health of Paleo and an opportunity to really stretch those taste receptors. Think of the version that I give you as the “RX’d” version, you’ll scale the ingredients/quality/complexity as you see fit or as funding requires, or you’ll hit this like a CrossFitter and go for “AS RX’d!” to get the greatest productive application of flavor.

Caveats: I know butter isn’t paleo, but you are cooking the milk solids and denaturing the minute milk proteins over this very high heat. I got my rationalization engine in full swing with this one: if Paleo man or woman spit roasted a whole female animal, the teats or udder would also be cooked and utilized, right? So you got yer brown butter right there, basically just a lovely, nutty, healthy animal fat! Ok, so its a stretch, if it really makes you drop your snatch, leave out the dairy, but it will make me sad and it will be your fault, m’kay? So try it! Off we go…

1. Put butter in a small pan over high heat and cook until it foams up and turns brown. IMMEDIATELY remove from heat and pour into a heat proof bowl or coffee cup. “Brown Butter” is crazy flavorful and really adds another whole dimension to the pancakes: remember, these are Uptown Flapjacks, my friends, we eat as a celebration of flavor not as mere fuel, so try all the minutia of this recipe, it’s worth it. Let cool to warm room temp while you assemble the rest of the goodies.
2. Split and scrape the half vanilla bean into the Coconut milk, add the split pod too, honey and orange rind. Warm in a pan to hot but not boiling. You release the full payload of the vanilla-y goodness and the orange oils by warming and letting the wee specks swim around a bit. You’ll strain this just before using, but for now just set aside and get the rest of your wet and dry together.
3. Combine almond flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Set aside.
4. Combine eggs, brown butter and strained vanilla-orange essence-coconut milk, mix the wet into the dry and let rest for five minutes while you test your nonstick pan/griddle: if a flicked finger of water dances off the surface, it’s cookin’ time. I like high smoke-point oils for LIGHTLY greasing the cooking surface, but almost always use either a wee bit o’ butter or bacon fat, depending on what I am serving the pancakes with.
5. Cook as you would any pancake: when the bubbles start to pop, flip it ONCE. When the lion’s share of the steam has escaped, it’s ready.

Serving suggestions:

Big fluffy ones for breakfast is an easy do, but expand your horizons, good people, and let them cool and use them for ‘bread’. Further down the pike: Thin out the recipe with 2x coconut milk and you have ‘wraps’ that when you cover them with smoked salmon and thinly sliced avocado, sprinkle with a fine chiff of basil and cilantro, you got something going on! Perfect for tiny half-dollar blinis to top with lime juice seasoned ’soured coconut milk’ (recipe coming soon) and some peppered bison bits for killer hors doeurves when you get a CrossFit hottie over to your pad to discuss certain motor recruitment patterns, capiche?

If you need help? Ask. I’ll help fix it. If you want more? Ask. That’s why I’m here.

Eat like its a sport,

Chef