Peachy Dutch Pancake

February. The shortest month, the cruelest month for anxiety — not because anything happens in February but because nothing happens, and the nothing is a blank screen onto which my brain projects every possible catastrophe. The rain continues. The gray continues. The marriage continues. Everything continues and nothing changes and the continuation without change is its own form of suffering.

I made amazake — the sweet fermented rice drink that Fumiko served warm in winter. Not alcoholic — amazake is rice koji fermented overnight, producing a naturally sweet, thick, porridge-like drink that tastes like comfort distilled into liquid form. Fumiko drank it every morning in February, when Sacramento winters are gray and cold in a way that Californians find offensive and Portlanders find adorable. I make it and drink it warm in bed before the household wakes, and the sweetness is the first taste of the day, and the first taste sets the tone, and the tone is: you are cared for. Even if the caring comes from yourself. Especially if the caring comes from yourself.

The book is twelve pages long. Twelve pages of Fumiko's kitchen, written in the margins of my other life — the yoga classes, the blog posts, the Miya-care, the Brian-avoidance. Twelve pages that read, when I reread them, like someone else wrote them, someone braver and more honest than I am. The writing self and the living self are diverging, and the divergence is the gap between who I am on the page and who I am at the dinner table, and the gap is growing, and the growing is both terrifying and necessary.

Miya will be four in August. She is in the pre-birthday phase that children enter around February, when the awareness of their own birthday becomes a gravitational force that bends all other events toward it. "When I am four," she says, about everything. "When I am four, I will cook by myself. When I am four, I will read. When I am four, I will be big." She is already big. She was big from the moment she arrived. The bigness is not about size. The bigness is about presence — the way she fills a room, the way she fills my life, the way she fills the spaces that Brian leaves empty.

My therapist asked about the book and about the marriage in the same session, and I said, "They're the same thing," and she said, "How?" and I said, "The book is about finding myself through food and grief. The marriage is about losing myself through compromise and silence. They can't both exist. The woman who writes the book is not the woman who stays in this marriage." My therapist wrote something down. She does this when I say something that matters. The pen-on-paper sound is her way of saying: keep going. You're close to something.

Amazake is not always easy to find, and some mornings the rice koji is not ready and the warmth still has to come from somewhere — so on those days, I make this instead. A Dutch pancake baked with peaches does what amazake does: it is sweet, it is warm, it takes just enough effort to feel intentional without requiring anything you don’t have. I pour the batter in before the house wakes, and while the oven does its work, I sit with my tea, and the rising smell of butter and fruit is its own kind of first taste, its own kind of: you are cared for.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 22 minutes | Total Time: 32 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

3 large eggs, room temperature
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole milk, room temperature
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon fine salt
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 medium ripe peaches, peeled and sliced (or 1 cup frozen peach slices, thawed and patted dry)
2 tablespoons brown sugar, packed
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Powdered sugar, for serving

Instructions

Preheat. Place a 10-inch cast iron skillet or oven-safe skillet on the center rack and preheat the oven to 425°F. Let the skillet heat for at least 10 minutes while you prepare the batter and peaches.
Make the batter. In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, flour, milk, granulated sugar, vanilla, and salt until the batter is completely smooth with no lumps. Set aside.
Season the peaches. In a small bowl, gently toss the peach slices with the brown sugar and cinnamon until evenly coated.
Butter the skillet. Using oven mitts, carefully remove the hot skillet from the oven. Add the butter and swirl the pan until it is fully melted and coats the bottom and sides.
Layer and pour. Arrange the seasoned peach slices in a single layer across the bottom of the buttered skillet. Pour the batter evenly over the peaches.
Bake. Return the skillet to the oven immediately and bake for 20 to 22 minutes, until the pancake is dramatically puffed, the edges are deep golden brown, and the center is set. Do not open the oven door during baking.
Serve. Remove from the oven — the pancake will begin to deflate within a minute or two, which is expected. Dust generously with powdered sugar and cut into wedges. Serve directly from the skillet while warm.

Nutrition (per serving)

Peachy Dutch Pancake — The First Sweet Taste of the Day