Pinaattiletut – Spinach Pancake
Pinaattiletut, or Spinach Pancakes, is one of those Finnish recipes I’d never heard of until I started experimenting with tracking down and trying out Finnish food, more often than not using my kids as the guinea pigs. They can be a bit picky at times (and they’re definitely nor Finnish) so if it passes their taste test and gets approved, it’s generally pretty good. (And I know, once I started looking I found a good few recipes for Spinach pancakes but here I’ve stuck with what seems to be a Finnish standard).
Well, I can say that Pinaattiletut passed the taste test with flying colours. The consensus is that spinach in pancakes is delicious and as they both came back for seconds, they weren’t just being polite! Now none of the Finnish recipe websites I looked at gave any clue as to when you eat these, although I did find one where the author mentioned that she remembered having them at school for lunch., served with sweet and tart red jam (maybe gooseberry?) and a salad with shredded cabbage and lingonberries which sounds pretty interesting. There seem to be quite a few different variations of the recipe around – I stuck with the simple “blend the spinach into the mix and cook in a pan a la standard pancakes approach”, but there also seems to be a jelly-roll version. Anyhow, I usually work on the KISS principle (Keep it Simple…) with my cooking.
As with any pancakes, they were straightforward and hard to go wrong with – definitely a bonus. They were also surprisingly tasty. I made them for breakfast but you can just as easily served them for lunch or even with dinner. Also, while the recipes usually call for a tart berry jam, I didn’t have any so I whipped a bag of frozen strawberries from the freezer and knocked up a quick batch of fresh strawberry spread (frozen strawberries, a dash of water and some sugar cooked and then pureed). Turned out to be a delicious combination.
Pinaattiletut (Spinach Pancakes) – the Ingredients
- 2 1/2 cups of fresh baby spinach (frozen is OK if fresh spinach is not available
- 500ml of milk
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 Tablespoon of Baking Soda
- 1 cup of wholewheat flour
- 1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour
- 1 Tablespoon of Olive Oil / Vegentable Oil
- Some variations on this recipe include a 1/4 teaspoon of grated nutmeg
- Butter or Oil for cooking the pancakes
- Berry Jam (lingonberry, cranberry, gooseberry) for serving
Pinaattiletut (Spinach Pancakes) – the Instructions
- Wash and drain the fresh baby spinach if needed (I usually buy mine pre-washed and ready to use)
- Puree the spinach with the milk in a blender
- Pour into mixing bowl and whisk in the eggs, salt, oil and flour until you have a smooth batter
- Warm up the frying pan (medium heat) and lightly grease with butter or oil
- Make any size pancakes you want
- Place a soup ladle full of batter in the pan and cook until the wet side of the pancake bubbles (usually about 2-3 minutes)
- Flip and cook the other side for 2-3 minutes until lightly brown
- Serve warm with jam or whatever else takes your fancy
Pinaattiletut are easy to make, and with large amounts of fresh spinach blended in, they are rather nutritious as well as tasting great – they make a great breakfast alternative for the kids – they devour far more spinach this way than they’d ever consume as salad. You don’t have to serve them with jam either, they taste just as good with bacon, eggs and maple syrup! I’ve also used small pancakes cooled down and then buttered as snacks for the kids for school.
They are indeed green, which fortunately my kids found interesting rather than off-putting. But just adding the spinach makes a huge difference nutritionally – just one of THESE pancakes will get you or your kids 11% of your daily value of Iron, 64% of your Vitamin A, and 18% of your daily value of Calcium (approximately). Eat a couple, as you probably will, and you’re off to a healthy start to the day.
And to be honest, unless I’d been working through Finnish recipes this particular combination of spinach and pancakes would never have occurred to me. Guess I haven’t been reading enough recipe books……. but then, how many guys do?
Hyvää ruohahalua! (Bon Appetit!)…………Nigel
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