More Nora, Recipe and All

In the pre­vi­ous blog, I wax elo­quent about Nora Ephron. So sim­i­lar are our pas­sions, paths of dis­cov­ery and almost par­al­lel lives, that I’m left won­der­ing if we were sis­ters in another incarnation.

It’s prob­a­bly our Jew­ish her­itage, crazy fam­i­lies and cre­ative bent that make us kin­dred in my eyes, all of which are dis­cussed, often hilar­i­ously, in her lat­est book: a thin, com­pact tome called I Remem­ber Noth­ing. This title is a ref­er­ence to being a middle-aged (69-year-old) woman for whom mem­ory loss, tak­ing so many pills in the morn­ing that she has no room for break­fast and other haz­ards of the aging process are darkly funny.

The book is also pep­pered with ref­er­ences to food and even includes the odd recipe. Again, Nora and I are on the same page, espe­cially in the case of the Ricotta Pan­cakes she writes about in the chap­ter called I Just Want to Say: Teflon.

In it, she bemoans the fact that so many things she likes and depends on are found to be dan­ger­ous to a person’s health. About to throw out her favourite Teflon pan, she makes one last batch of her no-carb Ricotta Pan­cakes for which it was the per­fect utensil.

Strange but true, a ver­sion of these were one of mother’s sta­ples when mak­ing break­fast for my over-weight dad. I have also made ren­di­tions of them over the years. Here are the pan­cakes I made this morn­ing inspired by Nora’s recipe which did not include my nutrition-boost of bran and oats.

Ricotta pan­cakes
You could use cot­tage cheese instead of ricotta.

1 cup ricotta cheese
2 eggs
2 tbsp wheat bran
3 tbsp quick-cooking or old-fashioned rolled oats
But­ter or oil for lightly greas­ing skillet

In bowl, com­bine ricotta, eggs, bran and rolled oats.

Grease skil­let and place over medium heat. When hot, add spoon­fuls of pan­cake bat­ter; flat­ten gen­tly with spoon. Cook about 6 to 8 min­utes, turn­ing once, until golden brown.

Serve with maple syrup, apple­sauce, yogurt or gar­nish of choice.

Makes about 6 medium pancakes.