Pancake Stack with Toasted Almonds and Maple Syrup

Tweet

Today is Tuesday

Some confusion arose this morning as to - firstly what day of the week it was and then subsequently - was this pancake Tuesday? I decided it was and went off to fix myself a massive coffee and what turned out to be an equally enormous stack of pancakes.


It is pancake Tuesday - but not until next week, so for once I am ahead of the game and have this recipe for you to try on the real pancake Tuesday!

Ingredients
Serves 2 - makes 10 mini pancakes (diameter 10cm!)
55g plain flour
1 egg
100 ml of milk with 35 ml cold water added in
melted butter - around a tablespoon
Maple Syrup
Large Handful Toasted Almonds

• Sieve the flour into a large bowl. Add in a pinch of salt if you like.
• Make a well in the centre of the sifted flour. Break the egg into the centre. Break up the eggs with a spoon and then gently stir, so that the egg pulls in a little flour with each stir. Continue to do this until the mixture is getting thick.
• Add in a little of the milk mixture - continue until all the flour has been incorporated. If you don't rush then you should have a nice batter that has little lumps. If you do have lumps give it a whisk with a balloon whisk.
• Allow the mixture to rest for a few minutes if you did use a balloon whisk.
• Heat up a small non stick frying pan on a med/high heat. Add in a small nob of butter. When it begins to bubble add in a spoonful of the pancake mixture. Swirl around to coat the base of the pan.

• If you have the pan heated up well - the pancake should take 230 seconds or so on each side. You can see the batter on top slowly turning opaque as it cooks through.

• Stack pancakes in a warm oven on a plate covered with kitchen towel until you have a huge pile of pancakes. Then enjoy with your topping of choice - sugar and lemon, maple syrup, nutella, banana and Chantilly cream.

Pancake Dinner Extravaganza

Tweet

Course 1 - Potato Blinis with Smoked Salmon

So as pancake day approached we started to think of what we would make to mark this most singularly culinary celebration. If Christmas was changed to roast turkey day, and Halloween was barn brack day, when instead of going trick or treating/giving presents everyone would be at home making cakes/turkey. It will soon be national fish and chips day too - well in May! 

We thought we’d like to bring a random group of people together in our house, for a feast of pancakes. So we put an invite up on our own facebook, and within 15 minutes we’d reached our quota for the dinner.

We decided on a menu that encompassed a different type of pancake for each course
Starters were smoked salmon blinis
Main course was pancake cannelloni with bolognaise sauce
and ricotta and leek cannelloni with tomato sauce for the veggies
Dessert was Crepe Suzette - kaboom!

Smoked  Salmon and Potato Blinis

Ingredients

6 boiled potatoes
2 eggs
1/2 pint of milk 
about 2 tbsps four
creme fraiche (or cream cheese)
smoked salmon
chives 

The potato blinis were made by mashing about 6 boiled potatoes and combining this with 2 eggs, about 1/2 pint of milk and about 2 tbsps four. I just added things until I got the right consistency- very instinctive of me but not so good for blogging recipes! The batter should be thick in consistency, like whipped cream. I cooked them by getting a heavy frying pan really hot, smearing on some butter with a wadded up paper towel, and putting a tablespoon on the mixture at a time in the pan. I could do about 8 at a time. Cook on one side for about 3 or 4 mins, until golden brown and then flip. 

We served with creme fraiche and smoked salmon but you could top with anything- I was thinking cream cheese would be nice with roasted tomatoes. 

Recipes for pancake cannelloni and crepe suzette to follow before Easter I promise!

Tweet

Anne’s Wonderful Rich Chai Syrup
From Berlin with Love

Anne sent us over a lovely xmas package with some goodies- a yellow spatula, a cute re-usable spotty bag, and best of all some super tasty chai syrup which she knocked up her self. We promptly finished the bottle and then craving more, begged for the recipe, which she very kindly provided.

The syrup is deep with flavour and is sweet without being too sickly. Anne said it would make the house smell great - and by god it did!

Ingredients
2 teaspoon of pepper corns
3 stick of cinnamon
2 tablespoons of cardamon pods
Root ginger, thinly sliced - 3 inch section
2 teaspoons of cloves
3 jars of honey
1 litre of water
Clean and sterilised jars

Mix and crush gently all of the big spices - and then tip into1 liter of water - bring to the boil and simmer gently for 30 mins. Stir in 2 Barry’s tea-bag (Anne was very specific about this, had to be Barry's!) for two mins until a rich deep tea red color.

Sieve the water to rid it of any bits and pieces. Then add the three jars of honey. Bring this to a gently boil until it thickens up and darkens slightly.

Pour into sterilised jars. We did this by boiling them in a big pan of water for 20 minutes. The recipe makes in terms of volume about equal to the amount of honey that you put in – so if you like you could sterilize the jars that you took the honey from.

This syrup is great poured into hot milk, with blueberries over yogurt, on apple pancakes and also very, very good in tea. I’m tempted to use it as the sweetener in a fresh batch of granola also. We made two type on with Barry sand the other with green tea. The barry’s turned out a bit richer and a darer colour. Anne asked for a vanilla pod in the recipe – but we didn’t have one- maybe that’s the secret ingredient.

Thanks Anne I foresee this becoming a kitchen staple - see you for St Patricks Day!

Leek and Bacon Crepes

Tweet

Crêpes avec Poireaux et Lardon It was the weekend of the brunch. We started on Saturday with a place I would like to nominate for 'Best BLT' in Dublin, The News Cafe in Blackrock. They also do a great fry - with their own recipe flat sausage - nice.

Then it was onto these for Sunday brunch. I ate the best crepe ever in Roscoff while waiting for the ferry. They were divine and a very fitting end to the two week eating and cooking binge that was my summer holiday. I wrote a little about them here.This is my attempt to re-create them - hampered only by my lack of a drop of white wine for the sauce. We cheated and bought pre-made pancakes - I will blog the recipe for pancakes - pancake Tuesday special perhaps.

The photos come courtesy of Delo - you can see more of his photos here. Be warned there are many, many , many photos of bicycles!

Ingredients
Serves 2
4 pancakes
3 leeks - sliced in 2cm slices
Lardons (or rashers sliced in strips)
4 slices of Provolone Cheese (or similar mild cheese)
2 tablespoons of cream
Butter!
Salt and Pepper

Cook the some butter over a medium heat for about 3-4 mins then lash in the lardons and continue to cook until your bacon is nice and crispy and the leeks are bright green - with nice little orangey brown edges yum. I once said my favourite colour is the inside of a leek - LOVE it - then eat it - that's what I say, except horses - don't eat horses, bad French people, but I love your pancakes.

Ramble sorry. Then add in the cream, season and bring up to a gentle simmer to thicken. In a clean frying pan - flick in a nob of butter, until it melts. Then pop in your pancake. Place a big spoonful of your mixture into the centre. Push it out to be a little smaller than a postcard. Top this with some cheese. Fold over the edgesTo make a nice little parcel - and serve. This orange is nice - fancy fanta!

Breakfast in France

Tweet

Le Petit Dejeuner Galette

I didn't make this so maybe I shouldn't blog it, but it was a wonderful start to the day, delivered to me on a plate - I love holidays, thanks Delo.We ate a number of crepes and galettes while we were away, crepes are sweet, while galettes are savory and made with buckwheat flour. We bought these pre-made ones from the supermarket to play with back at the van. Often a galette comes with an egg on, the white quickly finds it way through the holes in the pancake and cooks while the yoke stay all gooey. Inside hidden away from sight are some nice little lardons (batons of bacon - see detail photo!) and some melty emmental. A grind of black pepper and a coffee and you're done.Also specialities in Brittany are creme de caramel au beurre salle, which is creme caramel made with salted butter, served on crepes with cooked apples or bananas and chantilly. There's always the classic lemon and sugar.

The best galletes we ate were in Roscoff and were just too delicious to photograph! Bacon with leeks fondue, the other had scallops with gratin vegetables, both were bursting with flavour and showed what a wide range of tastes and ingredients these little galletes can handle.... now I regret not taking a photo ah well, sometimes the moment is just too good to spoil