Mateo came home from Little League practice on Saturday in shorts for the first time since September. The thermometer on the porch column read 74 degrees at noon, Nate opened every window in the house, and Pim relocated to the sunniest stair. It was, officially, the first warm Saturday of the year, and around here that means chive pancakes.
The chive clump by the back steps went in during our first real garden spring in 2020, from a small nursery pot that cost less than a coffee. Every year it's the first thing we eat from the yard, weeks before the lettuce and months before a tomato. By late April it's a dense fountain of hollow blue-green spears about ten inches tall, and it can take a hard haircut without blinking.
Cutting the chives
I cut chives with kitchen scissors about two inches above the soil, a big handful from one side of the clump. If I cut evenly across the top instead, the whole thing looks chewed for weeks, while a clean wedge from one side grows back in about three weeks and nobody can tell. The clump will flower in May, with purple pom-poms that are edible too, but the leaves are best now, before the flower stalks get tough.
The scallions in this batch were a bonus. When the February onions went into the west bed, I had a couple dozen leftover seedlings, skinny as pencil leads, that didn't fit. They've been sitting in a jar of water on the kitchen counter, and they taste exactly like tiny, tender scallions. If you don't have extra onion seedlings, a bunch of store scallions does the same job.
The chives went on the kitchen scale before anything else. Three ounces, entered in the harvest log under herbs. It's not much, but it's the first line of the 2025 harvest, and I like seeing it there.
The pancakes
These are crisp, savory pancakes, closer to a Korean pajeon than a breakfast pancake, with more green than batter. They take about 20 minutes start to finish and make three 10-inch pancakes, enough for the three of us with nothing left over.
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 2 tablespoons cornstarch
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 egg
- 3/4 cup ice-cold water
- A big handful of chives, about 1 1/2 cups cut into 1-inch pieces
- 4 scallions or a handful of onion thinnings, sliced thin
- Neutral oil for the pan
Whisk the flour, cornstarch and salt in a bowl. Add the egg and the cold water and whisk just until smooth. It should look like a thin pancake batter. Fold in the chives and scallions until every piece is coated.
Heat a 10-inch skillet over medium-high with about two tablespoons of oil until it shimmers. Pour in a third of the batter and spread it thin with the back of a spoon. Cook three or four minutes, until the edges are lacy and brown, then flip, press it flat with a spatula and give it two or three minutes more. Slide it onto a cutting board, cut it into wedges, and start the next one.
For the dipping sauce, I stir together 3 tablespoons of soy sauce, 1 tablespoon of rice vinegar, 1 teaspoon of sesame oil, a pinch of red pepper flakes and a few snipped chives.
My mistake, every single year: the first pancake. I get impatient and pour the batter before the pan is truly hot, and the first one comes out pale and gummy in the middle. Saturday was no different. Nate ate it standing at the stove and called it "the test pancake," which is generous. The second and third were exactly right, deep golden and shattering at the edges, flecked all over with green like a painter's drop cloth.
Lunch on the steps
We ate on the front porch steps, with the plate between us and the sauce in a coffee mug because every small bowl was in the dishwasher. Mateo dunked each wedge twice, which he insists is not double dipping if it's the same piece. Pim sat behind the screen door and watched with the expression of a cat who has been personally wronged.
It felt like the season turning over. Down in the basement, the tomatoes are in their yogurt cups waiting for May, and next weekend they start going outside for real. The window boxes are still empty and the beds are mostly bare. But we ate lunch from the yard on Saturday, sitting in the sun, and the chive clump looked exactly the same afterward. That's the best thing about chives.
