Popover or Pancake?

unmitigated fashion agony and something Nordic

From Karyl’s Cook & Tell Newsletter (June 1999)

Spring has been one media event after another. I’ve come to believe that it’s arranged every year as a reward for soldiering on through a quiet eventless winter, a season that doesn’t go away as readily and willingly up here in the northeast corner of the United States as it does practically everywhere else. If I say that May is to us, what April is to all you other folks, you’ll get the idea.

Along about the beginning of May, when we’re just getting the hang of spring, it dawns on us that it’s practically summer. Of course, this is nice. What is not to like about summer? But it has felt like winter for so long, even while looking approximately like spring, that we get to thinking we deserve some kid of compensation, some sort of whoop-de-doo, maybe, to keep us going until June kicks in, and all danger of frost is over.

So, for starters, we had this year’s crop of nine-to-thirteen-year-old girls competing for the coveted title of “Miss Shrimp,” in a pageant that opens Fisherman’s Festival weekend. We all rooted with equal enthusiasm for the fourteen entrants, whether the songstress forgot her lines or the twirler dropped her baton. Each year’s candidates always impress us with their stage presence and their show biz spirit and spunk, and this year’s lineup was no exception. I have no idea how other small towns recruit emcees for talent shows and other gala productions, but here, they seem to come out of the woodwork. Southport’s own kindergarten teacher, appearing for the first time on this or any other stage, immediately put the little girls at ease—and the likes of Bert Parks and Dick Clark to shame.

Exactly one week later, I stood in front of my closet, wondering what to wear to the Alumnae Community Band Concert. This madcap whirl of activities, as glamorous and stimulating as it may sound, does have its downside. There is the problem of how to dress for the occasion. All you people to the south and west of us are already fitted out in your summer clothes, while we’re still dithering over the definition of “spring clothes.” The season for wearing such garb in coastal Maine is so ambiguous, so cold, that every so-called spring, whatever the reason (no time, wrong phase of the moon, low tide), I manage to finesse the chance to go to the city to buy an armload of season-specific clothes. After a few days of unmitigated fashion agony, when my clothes are just too brown or too corduroy, it all blows over and it’s summer—flowered-cotton, crazy-colored summer.

Two weeks later, the band, a contingent of veterans and a bevy of alumnae drum majorettes marched in Memorial Day parades all over the peninsula and we followed them, as usual, from the tip of Southport Island to the center of Boothbay Harbor.

The dizzying pace wound down long enough for us to enjoy a leisurely breakfast at the Congregational Church. It’s their annual spring fundraiser in support of late June’s Windjammer Days festivities, which jump-start the summer tourist season.

Summer is another media even entirely, for which, I am happy to report, I have the clothes: jeans, tee shirts and a crazy-colored skirt or two.

Karyl’s Headnotes

Strawberry Pancake: It’s not plural. This big beauty is one singular thing, nothing like the hotcakes or flapjacks we associate with the word, but vaguely omeletish; something like a popover gone wrong. I finally made the lovely thing, after years of watching the tiny, yellowed newspaper clipping flutter about, in my frantic searches for other recipes. Safe at last, in Cook & Tell.

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Strawberry Pancake, Finnish Style

Makes 4 servings

• 1 c. flour

• 1 T. sugar

• ¼ t. salt

• a smidge of nutmeg, a dash of cardamom

• 2 eggs

• 2 c. milk

• 1 T. sugar to sprinkle over top

• 1-2 T. butter

Preheat oven to 350◦F. Whisk together the flour, sugar and salt. In large bowl, beat the eggs and add the milk. Add the dry ingredients to the liquids and beat until smooth. Melt the butter in a deep pie dish or 9” cast iron skillet. Pour the batter in gently and sprinkle with sugar. Bake for 30-35 min. Turn oven off and leave in for another 5-10 min. It will be puffy with a browned rim, but will sink when removed from the oven. Serve warm, cut in wedges topped with sweetened crushed strawberries. Great reheated!

Made this last summer and it’s everything mum said—a COLD leftover slice is to die for! And, yeah, I know I promised we’d have something Swedish on the menu this issue, but Finnish is as close as we’re gonna get.

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Amie’s Endnotes

The Fisherman’s Festival was discontinued in 2016, after 41 years. I still remember the thrill of watching a grade-school classmate take first runner-up in the Miss Shrimp Pageant (RIP, Peggy); the codfish relay races; the trap-hauling contests. They’re still holding lobster boat races in Boothbay this month, along with the Windjammer Days Festival, now in its 62nd year, and the 9^th Annual Fishin’ For Fashion Show, the height of nautical haute couture. Seems like a fitting ending to my mom’s seasonal wardrobe dilemma.

PS: The 70^th Annual Strawberry Festival just up the road a piece in Wiscasset happens on June 29—a fitting ending to this issue’s recipe!  

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