The Pancake Adventure — diaries of an expat in Denmark
It was a beautiful Sunday morning.
I have this thing — I like to make pancakes on Sundays. I’m not really sure why, whether it’s because I just generally like sweets (who doesn’t, duh), or because I just like making things to feel more complete…
For whatever reason, I wanted to make pancakes. On a beautiful Sunday morning, as we have already established. It’s also important to mention that the story happened a couple of years ago — sometime mid year 2015, to be specific.
September is usually quite delightful in Denmark — full of sunshine and light breeze, not too rainy and it’s almost as if it eases you gently into the thought that soon you will spend half a year in the darkness. I lived at that time with my Danish flatmate Mads. He was a lovely dude, just a couple of years older than me, very kind and quite infatuated with football.
On that morning he was not home, which made me think that he had been partying last night and he will probably come back sometime in the afternoon. Mads and I shared a cute two bedroom apartment located on the ground floor. It also had a balcony, where we kept Madses old, broken bike and other trash crucial for his survival.
As most Danish apartments, it had white walls, white tall ceiling and quite old pine floors. In the summer, it was wonderful there. In winter however, the cold air crept into my room through a huge gap between the main entrance door and the floor. It froze my room so much that I had to rely on multiple blankets and litres of hot tea for sustenance. Danes call it “hygge”.
On that particular September morning I was not freezing though and felt inspired to make some pancakes. Since I wasn’t much of a cook, there were barely any ingredients in the kitchen, so I had to take a 10-minute walk to the nearest supermarket. I decided to prepare in advance, called my mom and asked how to make pancakes. At the age of 23, it felt reasonable that I didn’t really know it by myself. After acquiring a recommended shopping list, I opened google translate and looked up all the Danish words for what I needed.
First part of the shopping was fairly easy. I have seen an egg before, so I knew what to look for and milk wasn’t much of a challenge either. But then the time came for the queen of pancake ensemble — wheat flour. I looked at the shelves in disbelief. They were stocked with dozens of mysterious bags and to my horror — all and none of them had the word that Google to be “flour” in Danish.
What I got from the translation software (back in 2015) was “mel”. There, on the shelf, all of them were either something-mel or even worse, something-mel-something-else.
My eyes were spasmodically shifting between words Hvedemel, Falkemel, Kartoffelmel and other meaningless to me cousins of the simple “mel” I was searching for. Starting to panic, I decided to call my mom, who technically didn’t speak Danish, but believed to be an expert in everything.
- What do they look like? — she asked and I could sense the confidence of a know-it-all behind her question.
- I don’t know mom. They all kinda look the same. Big paper bags or boxes with something that feels like flour when I touch or shake them. But they can’t all be flour and all be called something different, right?
- Let me try translating the word from Russian instead! Maybe it will help! — even though I was raised and educated in Poland, my mother tongue, figuratively and literally speaking, was Russian.
- I don’t know if it matters if it’s Russian or not, but sure, whatever. Check it out. — I listened to her breathing while she was typing “flour” in Russian to Google Translate. — So?
- It says “mel”. — she answered in disappointment.
I stood still in discomposure for a minute or so, and then decided to just choose one bag that seemed the most flourish to me. I took one that had a picture of an elaborate cake on it and it felt like the correct choice. The bag, or rather the box, was also somewhat smaller than the other ones so I thought that it’s for the better, in case this flour turns out to be wrong or something.
Still in a call with my mom, I came home and started preparing the pancake batter. I beat the eggs, added milk, water and was ready for the flour. Slightly holding my breath in anticipation, I opened the box. Its content was a white powder — just like one would expect the flour to look. If that someone were 23 and never cooked before. I poured the powder into the batter sticking to the amount from the recipe and started mixing. It wasn’t getting thicker though.
- What now? It’s not getting thicker at all. I thought the batter would get thicker.
- I think those Danes just have some poor quality flour. Just add some more. — advised my mother, equally involved in the success of the pancakes mission. I tried adding a little bit more, not to ruin the batter but it still wouldn’t thicken. So I poured in a whole glass. Nothing happened.
I mean — a lot of stuff happened — the powder was all over me, my hair, the kitchen counter and even though the majority of it did end up in the bowl, the damn batter still would not get thicker.
- Pour it all! — screamed my mom and with one dramatic gesture I tossed all of the powder into the mixing bowl. It didn’t look right. There was a lot of powder there but somehow it just looked… not like the pancake batter.
I stood there, not sure whether I should just go for it and start frying the mixture or go back to the shop and complain. And then my mom asked me something that hadn’t popped into my head until then.
- Have you tasted it?
I haven’t. It was powdered sugar. And the box said “Flormelis”.
