Panke! (pan-kay)

Cooking class!

As many of you know, Luke's two favorite foods are donuts and pizza.  So, it will come as no surprise that we were both excited to learn how to make the local variety of donuts. They are called panke- pronounced very similar to the English word "pancake."

When we asked to make panke, our teacher asked us if we wanted to make them with our without sauce.

We didn't understand the implications of sauce, so we picked with sauce (hoping that they would be sweet donuts with a sweet sauce). Turns out that with sauce = savory donuts with a meat sauce and without sauce = sweet donuts covered in sugar.  So, we learned to make savory donuts. :)

Ingredients:
Flour- 4 cups
Yeast- 4 tsp
Salt- 1 tsp and a little
Na daka (mixture of freshly pounded hot pepper, garlic, and onion)- one spoonful
Warm water- 2 1/2 cups

1. Combine dry ingredients. Gradually add warm water and mix into a paste.

Tana kwaba fluwa (she mixes a paste)

2. Cover and let rise until it bubbles (maybe 30 minutes)

Sai ta taso (let it rise)

3. Drop by spoonfuls into hot peanut oil, fry 1-2 minutes, turn, fry another 1 minute or so until golden brown.

Panke dafa cikin man gajiya (Panke cooking in peanut oil)

Ski ke nan (finished)

panke de dadi (delicious!!)

They were delicious!  We ate them with meat sauce the first day...then the next day we made bacon gravy (thank-you bacon bits!!!) and enjoyed biscuits and gravy. So yummy!

biscuits and gravy

Then, last weekend, we made them on our own and used sugar instead of the onion mixture and coated them with cinnamon sugar. So delicious!!!

wake up and watch out for splashing oil, luke!

Yum!  (not sure why they are green in the picture!)