Oy! For Fat Tuesday, all I wanted to do was to make the gorgeous pea pancakes that my great buddy, Cynthia, featured on her blog this week. She and I share the practice of NEVER posting someone else’s recipe without permission, so she had a link to the recipe.
I was all ready to make them, but the cooking of the sugar snap peas didn’t seem nearly long enough to me, so I was searching around for OTHER pea pancake recipes. It’s such an unusual recipe, I actually didn’t expect to find anything, but boy, did I!
Here’s the fabulous recipe that Cynthia used and that I intended to use, posted in June of 2009.
Now look, HERE is Chef Melissa Clark’s recipe from her book Chef, Interrupted published IN 2005. Almost exactly the same.
To be fair, the blogger did change ¼ cup of flour to 4 tablespoons of flour.
THERE’S JUST ONE PROBLEM: A quarter cup of flour IS 4 tablespoons of flour!
AND his changing of 2 tablespoons of whole milk and 1 tablespoon of heavy cream to 3 tablespoons of half and half really didn't fool me one bit.
He also changed the garnish of ½ cup crème fraiche to 1 cup.
Strictly speaking, changing 2 or 3 ingredients OR changing the method SUBSTANTIALLY does qualify as changing a recipe, but he didn’t even make enough of THOSE changes. And, come on, it’s obvious he used
My friend, Tom writes about this too. He likes the term "inspired by", but, of course, he's talking about recipes that he's changed extensively.
All this blogger guy (who identifies himself as a private chef) would have had to say is that he came across a recipe from Melissa Clark’s book and that he adapted it.
I found it in only two clicks and I really wasn’t trying to trip him up. He has some gorgeous food on his blog and great pictures and he does give credit to other cooks sometimes, but he made THIS recipe sound like HE thought it up and that kind of stinks.
