Gingerbread Oatmeal Pancakes

Late February. The blog readership is growing ahead of the book publication — the agent and publisher are doing pre-publication publicity, and the blog is the foundation, the platform, the place where readers already know my voice. Seventeen thousand readers. The number grows in increments of hundreds now, each hundred a cluster of people who found me and stayed, who read about miso soup and grief and the chipped bowl and said: yes. This is the thing I need to read. The yes is the readership. The yes is the community. The yes is Fumiko's kitchen, digitized and distributed, the gathering place that is not a room but a practice, not a location but a love.

I made amazake — the sweet fermented rice drink, the February staple — and drank it warm in bed while reading a novel and the luxury of the moment was not the drink or the book but the silence: the apartment quiet, Miya at Brian's, the evening mine. The luxury of silence is the luxury of the divorced. The married do not have silence. The married have company, which is the opposite of silence, and the opposite of silence is what I had for seven years and do not miss. I miss other things about the marriage — the presence of another adult, the shared parenting, the warm body in the bed on cold nights — but I do not miss the noise. The noise was the price. The silence is the reward.

I started writing the second book in earnest — the one that has been forming in the dark, the one about two kitchens, the one about being neither Japanese nor American and both Japanese and American and the cooking that happens in the space between. The first chapter is about my mother's kitchen — Barbara's kitchen in Fresno, then Sacramento, then Ashland — the American kitchen, the pasta kitchen, the casserole kitchen, the kitchen where love was loud and plentiful and did not involve dashi. The second chapter will be about Fumiko's kitchen. The book will alternate: American chapter, Japanese chapter, the two kitchens in conversation, the way my two selves have always been in conversation, the way the chirashizushi sits next to the green bean casserole at every holiday, the way I am both things at the same table.

The amazake was the evening’s gift — warm, sweet, quietly fermented — but the morning after a silence like that deserves its own ritual, something you make slowly and entirely for yourself. These gingerbread oatmeal pancakes have become my February morning answer: the spices are the color of Fumiko’s wooden spice shelf, the oats make them sturdy enough to hold the weight of a full cup of tea alongside, and the whole thing comes together in one bowl in a kitchen that is, blessedly, mine alone. Platform or no platform, readership or no readership — this is the breakfast that reminds me why I started writing about food in the first place.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 20 minutes | Total Time: 30 minutes | Servings: 4 (about 12 pancakes)

Ingredients

1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons brown sugar, packed
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon fine salt
1 1/4 cups buttermilk
2 tablespoons unsulphured molasses
1 large egg
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Neutral oil or butter, for the pan
Maple syrup and powdered sugar, to serve

Instructions

Pulse the oats. Place the rolled oats in a blender or food processor and pulse 6—8 times until roughly half are a coarse flour and half remain whole. This gives the pancakes structure without turning them dense.
Mix the dry ingredients. In a large bowl, whisk together the pulsed oats, flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and salt until evenly combined.
Whisk the wet ingredients. In a separate bowl or large measuring cup, whisk the buttermilk, molasses, egg, melted butter, and vanilla until smooth. The molasses will look streaky at first — keep whisking until fully incorporated.
Combine. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir gently with a rubber spatula until just combined. A few lumps are fine; do not overmix. Let the batter rest for 5 minutes while you heat the pan — this allows the oats to hydrate and the batter to thicken slightly.
Cook the pancakes. Heat a nonstick skillet or griddle over medium heat and lightly grease with butter or oil. For each pancake, pour about 1/4 cup of batter onto the surface. Cook until bubbles form across the surface and the edges look set, about 2—3 minutes. Flip and cook for another 1—2 minutes until cooked through and deeply golden.
Keep warm and serve. Transfer finished pancakes to a low oven (200°F) on a baking sheet to stay warm while you cook the remaining batches. Serve stacked with maple syrup and a dusting of powdered sugar.

Nutrition (per serving)

Gingerbread Oatmeal Pancakes — The Warmth You Make for Yourself