FIRST IMPRESSIONS
By Anne Willan

Marina del Rey, California. I’ve eaten in more fast food joints in the last three months than in my entire life. It has been a salutary, not to say searing, experience. The food itself was not bad, only rarely truly inedible. Fresh salads for example were routine, soups made some pretence at being homemade, the breads had a deceptively crisp golden crust until you bit into them.

The problems began beneath the surface. Squish! Delve inside and you find a world of ground-up baby food reconstituted for grownups, patties and burgers of nameless meat, elusive flavors of chicken or bacon that are disturbingly familiar, but somehow a mockery of the real thing.

It all came about when we moved not just houses, but continents, from rural France to coastal Los Angeles. Immobilized in cramped temporary quarters while our possessions traversed the Panama Canal, we resolved to live like the locals, many of them hulking surfers who congregated near the pier overlooked from our balcony.

We rapidly learned a lot. In principle we avoided the big names, MacDo, Jack in a Box, Taco Bell. I personally dislike pizza (too much bread) so that left a motley collection of homestyle diners, little ethnic joints clinging to life beside the sidewalk, and tourist traps with names like Killer Crab.

No complaints about service in seafront fast food joints. Speed is the name of the game and a seat is valuable, particularly at rush hour. So don’t expect more than a flashing smile from the Hollywood wannabe hoping to sell an expensive cocktail packed with mint and strawberry and spiked with a tinge of vodka, tequila, or rum depending on the theme of the enterprise.

Orders are filled rapidly and within moments a vast plate, often a bowl, arrives piled high with a triple helping of pasta, or possibly a slab of ribs, or a pale, dry brick of chicken breast tortured on the grill, all riding high on a mountain of tough dark greens. There’s my fiber ration for the day for sure. Only an Olympian in training could devour all that is on the plate.

It was a meal or two before I realized that even at the low price of fast food, I was paying for two repasts: the one I managed to eat on the spot, and the other that would be packed in a brown bag for me to consume, limp and slightly fermented, the next day. I could never manage it and at the end of each week, when cleaning the refrigerator, I would find a sad, soggy little group of these bags, instant fodder for the trash chute.

Drinks have been another learning experience. Most mass-market beverages are sweet, fizzy, and luridly colored in psychedelic greens and pinks; sparkling water is unobtainable and even tap water can be grudgingly dispensed when bottled water brings in the money at a dollar or more. Luckily coffee can still be relied on in most establishments, though more and more is permeated with the charred taste that is so admired in yuppie brands like Starbucks. 

Breakfast, I am happy to say, has saved many a day – eaten at lunch, occasionally even at dinner. It’s hard to ruin a 2+2+2 of pancakes, eggs any way you want ‘em, and sausage or bacon (though I always need extras on the bacon). Add to that some crispy hash browns and perhaps fried onion rings and you’re talking a fix that lasts 24 hours.

In fact now I’m installed in my own kitchen where I can get tetchy about the type of oil in the salad dressing, or obsess about the doneness of the green beans, I get quite nostalgic. Every now and again I slip out to our nearby diner which is patronized by shirt-sleeved businessmen and mothers with strollers, all of us escaping briefly into a safe, comforting fast food fix. I guess I’m well on my way to becoming a Californian.

© 2008, Anne Willan

Fresh Strawberry Ginger Pancakes

Inspired by the diner, I’ve started cooking various flavors of pancakes at home, just 15 minutes is enough to get them to table. Little dark strawberries are the best and at the market, you’ll smell the ripest almost before you see them.

Makes 12 pancakes to serve 3-4

• 1 quart ripe strawberries

• ½ cup (about 4 oz) crystallized ginger slices, chopped

• 1 heaping tablespoon honey or maple syrup

• ½ cup water
   

• For pancake batter
   

• 1 cup whole wheat flour

• 1 tablespoon sugar

• ½ teaspoon salt

• 1 teaspoon baking powder

• 1 teaspoon baking soda

• 1 egg

• 1 cup buttermilk, more if needed

• 4-5 tablespoons butter
   

• Large skillet or griddle

1. For batter: Stir flour, sugar, salt, baking powder and baking soda in a bowl until mixed. Make a well in the center and add egg and half the buttermilk. Stir with a whisk until mixed, then gradually whisk in surrounding flour to make a smooth batter. Stir in remaining buttermilk, cover and leave at room temperature 15-20 minutes. Melt butter and set aside.
    

2. Meanwhile hull strawberries and cut in blueberry-sized pieces. Put chopped ginger, honey or maple syrup and water in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Simmer until slightly syrupy, 7-10 minutes, and let cool.
     

3. To fry pancakes: Stir ¾ cup of chopped strawberries into batter with 2-3 tablespoons melted butter. Batter should pour easily, but if not add a little more buttermilk. Stir ginger syrup into remaining strawberries and transfer to a serving bowl. Heat skillet, brush with butter and pour on two or three 4-inch pancakes using a pitcher or ladle. Cook over medium heat until bubbles appear on surface and underside is brown, 3-4 minutes. Flip with a metal spatula and brown other side 2-3 minutes.
    

4. Fry remaining pancakes in the same way, piling them one on top of the other to keep warm. Add more butter to pan as needed so pancakes do not stick. Serve them at once, with the bowl of strawberries in ginger syrup.

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