The dough is a simple recipe - flour, sugar, butter, vanilla, and one egg white. The filling is a blend of great tastes - dates, orange juice, vanilla, and water boiled into a jam. The whole process was really fun.
Because his family is a true-to-the-bone pancake family, I really wanted him to share with me the secrets to making a good pancake, thin and delicate, perfectly browned on the outside, soft on the inside. He gave me a recipe, one that he has memorized. A set of very specific instructions, the right temp, the right amount of time for frying. I followed it to a tee, and sure enough, the pancakes came out the way I had always dreamed they would.