Savory cottage cheese pancakes are protein-packed and ready in minutes

The word pancakes may trigger thoughts of sweet, fruity breakfasts for most, but there is a whole world of savory dinner pancakes beckoning more att...

The word "pancakes” may trigger thoughts of sweet, fruity breakfasts for most, but there is a whole world of savory dinner pancakes beckoning more attention, and I am personally smitten with them.

My first bites of okonomiyaki from a street vendor in Tokyo, when I was in my teens, were eye-opening and still live vividly in my mind, as do the ham-and-cheese-filled buckwheat crepes I had in France years later. Then there are the potato latkes I grew up eating, the recipe for which, my dad tells me, is my inheritance. The idea of using an eggy batter to bind a selection of vegetables and proteins, then cooking them quickly in a skillet gets my mind reeling with ideas.

These pancakes are a product of such reeling. They would be right at home in a trendy TikTok video, since they are made with cottage cheese - the high-protein ingredient du jour. But they actually remind me of my grandfather, who ate cottage cheese nearly daily, as a snack mixed with sour cream and sliced banana, or mounded on top of a chopped salad and seasoned with lots of black pepper. Cottage cheese has always been "in” in my family - it was only a matter of time before I worked it into savory pancake form.

In this recipe, cottage cheese is mixed with beaten eggs and a little whole-wheat flour, forming a base to bind heaps of sautéed onion and cabbage, which is flavored with fresh dill and generously seasoned with freshly ground black pepper (my grandfather would approve).

Dropped in rounds onto a hot skillet, these vegetable-packed pancakes have just enough binding to hold the deeply browned onion and softened, yet still slightly crunchy, cabbage together in fritter form.