Easy 3 Ingredient Pancakes

September approaches and the blog is about to hit its one-year anniversary — one full year of writing about Filipino food from an Alaskan kitchen. I started in September 2016, scared and tentative, writing about adobo because I didn't know what else to write about and because adobo is the beginning of everything Filipino. Now I have dozens of posts, a small but loyal readership, and a voice I didn't know I had — one that speaks in recipes and stories and the particular intersection of the two that feels most like truth.

The ER is fine. "Fine" is the word I use when it's not bad but not good, when the shifts are routine and the patients are manageable and the boundaries hold without effort. Fine is underrated. Fine is the plateau between the peaks and valleys, the place where you can rest and look around and appreciate the view. After the floor, after the breakdown, after the nightmares, fine is extraordinary. Fine is the miracle of ordinary days.

I made suman this week — Filipino rice cakes wrapped in banana or coconut leaves and steamed until dense and sticky. Suman is the simplest Filipino sweet: glutinous rice, coconut milk, a little sugar, wrapped in leaves and steamed. The leaves give the rice a fragrance — vegetal, slightly smoky, green — and the rice develops a chewiness that's addictive, each bite requiring work from your jaw, the kind of eating that forces you to slow down.

I wrapped the suman in banana leaves from the Asian grocery — the frozen kind, thawed and wiped clean. The wrapping is an art: you lay the rice mixture on the leaf, fold the sides in, fold the ends over, and tie it with kitchen twine. It takes practice. My first three were ugly — lumpy, poorly folded, the string loose. By the tenth, they were passable. By the twentieth, I had found the rhythm. Fill, fold, tie. Like lumpia. Like everything. The hands learn.

I steamed them for an hour and the kitchen filled with the green, vegetal smell of banana leaves and coconut and I thought about all the things I've learned in a year of cooking and writing. How to make adobo in my sleep. How to document a recipe from a woman who doesn't use measurements. How to write about grief without drowning in it. How to stand at a stove and let the stove hold me up. How to be fine. How to trust fine. How to know that fine is enough, most days, and the days when it's not enough, there's suman and sinigang and the blog and Angela and Lourdes and the kitchen that never closes.

What suman taught me this week — and what a year of this blog has kept teaching me — is that the fewest ingredients demand the most presence. Glutinous rice, coconut milk, a little sugar: you can’t hide behind complexity, so you learn to trust the process itself. These easy 3 ingredient pancakes carry that same philosophy into mornings I don’t have the bandwidth for anything elaborate — banana, eggs, oats, and the quiet rhythm of a pan on low heat. After a week of folding and tying and finding the hands’ own memory, this felt like a natural continuation: simple food made with attention, which is really all cooking has ever asked of me.

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 10 minutes | Total Time: 15 minutes | Servings: 2 (about 6 small pancakes)

Ingredients

1 large ripe banana, the riper the better
2 large eggs
1/2 cup rolled oats (old-fashioned or quick oats both work)
Neutral oil or butter, for the pan

Instructions

Blend the batter. Add the banana, eggs, and oats to a blender or food processor. Blend on medium-high until completely smooth, about 30–45 seconds. The batter will be thicker than traditional pancake batter — this is correct. Let it rest for 2 minutes so the oats can absorb the moisture.
Heat the pan. Warm a nonstick skillet or griddle over medium-low heat. Add a small amount of butter or neutral oil and swirl to coat. The heat should be gentle — lower than you think you need. These pancakes burn easily if the pan runs hot.
Cook the first side. Pour approximately 2–3 tablespoons of batter per pancake onto the pan, leaving space between each. Cook undisturbed for 2–3 minutes, until the edges look set and the surface has lost its wet sheen. Small bubbles may form at the center.
Flip carefully. Use a thin spatula to flip each pancake gently. Cook the second side for 1–2 minutes until golden and cooked through. These pancakes are more delicate than flour-based ones, so patience with the flip matters.
Serve immediately. Transfer to a plate and serve warm. Top with fresh fruit, a drizzle of honey, a spoonful of nut butter, or eat them plain — the banana provides enough sweetness on its own. Repeat with remaining batter, adding a little more oil to the pan between batches as needed.

Nutrition (per serving)

Easy 3 Ingredient Pancakes — The Simplicity of Suman, Translated