Cooking With

Jackson Scott

Jackson Scott spent most of last year living in a ramshackle house called Melbourne in Asheville. With no TV or internet, he spent all his time listening to and making music, wearing gym shorts, drinking local hoppy beer and cooking pancakes with bacon and maple syrup. This recipe originates from a time when Jackson got really into cooking and went through a phase of making cookies. Pancakes are like cookies, but even better. Add chocolate chips to these babies for an extra treat.

 

Interview by Zofia Ciechowska, image by Carlijn Potma
Photos shot by Zach Correa and Aaron Kostial in Pittsburgh, USA

 

 

This recipe is for one of my favourite dishes that I’ve loved since I was a kid. It’s a classic. Breakfast food is the best. My mom would make pancakes with maple syrup and bacon for me when I was little. I’d eat them at the table. Funny thing is, I’ve never owned pyjamas, I’d just sleep in my clothes, so I’d eat them at the breakfast table in my rumpled clothes. For a really long time during my childhood, between the age of seven and 11, I made the couch my bed. I didn’t even have a mattress, I just slept on the couch. I loved it, never thought twice about it.

 

When I was living in my house in Asheville, which we called Melbourne, I started to get really into cooking. It was this tiny little ramshackle house, it was awesome. Friends came and went over the course of the year. It was a really pure environment for creating. We didn’t have a TV or internet connection, we all really got into vinyl records and all we wanted to do was sit around and listen to music and play music and that was pretty much it. I spent most of my time recording in the basement and hanging out in my room.

 

 

In the summer we wore this uniform around the house which consisted of gym shorts and questionable shirts, real bro shit. There was no AC and the heat was insane. We ate a lot of rice, vegetables and beans. I would whip up egg sandwiches, cooked chicken, all the good stuff. We would drink a lot of water and really hoppy beer because Asheville is supposedly the microbrewery capital of the USA. I’m trying to not hit the junk food too hard – I love potato chips, I eat too many of those.

 

My recipe stems from when I really got into cooking at one point and I used to make a lot of cookies. I’m not too much of a perfectionist when I cook; I just whip stuff up, throw in a ton of sugar and see where it goes. This resulted in me making stuff that was somewhere between a cookie and a biscuit – although it was still pretty good. So I do that with pancakes too. Although it’s probably better if you’re a bit more meticulous with these than I am…

 
 

 
 

How to make Jackso Scott’s Pancakes with Bacon and Maple Syrup

 

1 1/2 cups of flour
1 1/2 cups of milk
1/2 tsp of salt
1 1/2 tsp of baking powder

1 egg
10 strips of bacon
Butter
Maple syrup

 

• Destroy the egg and whisk it up with the milk.

• Mix the baking powder, salt and flour in a separate bowl. Add the egg and milk mixture and go crazy with it. You’ve got yourself some batter.

• Start frying the bacon before you cook the pancakes. I don’t like super crispy bacon; I go for the softer kind. I fry mine on a medium heat and flip it constantly. Be patient.

• Once your bacon is a few minutes away from being ready, get another frying pan and melt a shit ton of butter on it.

• Pour the pancake mix into the pan. Add some chocolate chips if you want to be creative. Let it cook for a minute and then flip it.

• Put your pancakes on a plate, put the bacon on top and serve with some good Canadian maple syrup. As far as maple syrup is concerned, only the finest will do: I won’t have any of that Aunt Jemima shit. The combination of the sweet syrup and salty bacon is just so great.

• Eat the pancakes whilst listening to Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66 or Boléro by Ravel. I like to put that on in the morning and have a cup of coffee.
 

Jackson Scott and company are at Tivoli’s Spiegelbar in Utrecht on 10 November. The show is free for Subbacultcha! members.