Search This Blog

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Pancakes for breakfast

One of the joys of living in Dalston, a not particularly salubrious but lively neighbourhood in Hackney, east London, is breakfast in the many Turkish and Kurdish cafés around.
My current favourite is Café Evin (which I think means 'home' in Turkish). The chief attraction of this particular venue is that there are two lovely women called Fatma sitting in the window all morning making goezleme or Turkish pancakes.
Fatma-1 rolls balls of savoury dough into huge circles and covers half of each disc with a filling. You can choose between cheese, spinach or potato. If, like me, you aren't good with choices before you've had your morning coffee, you can have multiple fillings.
The cheese, spinach and potatoes are all mixed with a variety of spices and vegetables - largely spring onions, I think, but am not sure.
Then she hands the delicious semi-circle to Fatma-2, who is in charge of the hob, a domed metal thing heated from underneath with gas.
It comes to the hungry breakfaster as a great dry floury thing, thinner than a pizza crust and wavering between soft and crispy. A much more satisfying breakfast than the full fry, and it won't leave you feeling full of grease.

1 comment:

Jo said...

Oh God. This sounds so good!