Tuesday Recipe Blogging: Pancake Day!

When I was a kid, Saturday evening meant pancakes for supper. Not what you probably think of when you think “pancakes” – these were thick, almost savoury cakes made with cream-cracker crumbs and cottage cheese and eggs, served with fruit sauce. Though I have not made them in years, the recipe is fixed in my mind:

Ingredients per person: 1 ounce of cream crackers, crushed or ground to fine crumbs; 1 ounce of smooth cottage cheese; 1 egg. Beat the cottage cheese and the eggs together to form a thick yellowish paste, then add the cream crackers “to a dropping consistency”, meaning that when I picked up a spoonful and dropped it into the hot oil, it fell cleanly from the spoon. We always fried them in shallow oil till they were dark brown, layered them on a plate with paper towel to catch the excess fat, and ate them with fruit sauce as soon as possible after they had been made.

The sauce was made with two tins of fruit – over the years I think my two favourite mixtures were pineapple and apricot, or mandarin oranges and pears, and usually preserved in fruit juice rather than syrup. But really, any kind was good – I think the only sort I ever regretted was a tin of fruit salad mix with glace cherries. It was always made in a cast-iron red pot that had been a wedding present: save a little fruit juice in a small bowl, and tip the two tins into the pot, turn up the heat under the fruit, and mix the juice with a tablespoon of cornflour. Add the mixture to the fruit in the pan, and stir: magically, to me when I was a child, the white mixture would disappear and the liquid juice in which the fruit rested would thicken into a sauce. This could be eaten hot or cold, so the sauce could be made hours or even a day before the pancakes. These were delicious and filling, and as I remember no one usually managed more than three. There were always leftovers, which were eaten cold as snacks.

Nowadays when I make pancakes I usually make them with a cup of flour, or more depending on how many people I am feeding, and a pinch of salt: make a well in the middle of the flour, stir in an egg, and then up to a pint of milk, or milk and water, or beer, (or cream if you want thicker, richer pancakes) to make a thin batter, which makes a large thin cake in a thin layer of hot grease in a pan or on a griddle.

But I also sometimes make sourdough batter, which is egg-free: I take some sourdough starter from the fridge, add some more flour and water, beat it into a thin liquid with a plastic whisk (metal isn’t good for the yeast) and leave it to quicken for an hour or so in a warm place. When it’s bubbly, it’s ready to be used as I would basic pancake batter.

I eat pancakes plain, or with maple syrup, or lemon juice and sugar, or with a spice like cinnamon whisked into the batter, or with curry…

How do you make your pancakes? How do you eat your pancakes?

Tuesday Recipe Blogging: A hill of beans

As I noted yesterday in The Awful Self-Pity of a Self-Righteous Bigot, the only difference between the pile of reasons why same-sex couples shouldn’t be allowed to marry and a hill of beans is that the beans make a nutritious and tasty meal.

Beans are high in protein, a good source of unsaturated fat, and carbohydrates: also potassium, calcium, iron, and several B-vitamins. If you eat beans with bread (or any kind of grain food) or cheese (any kind of dairy food) to provide the amino acid methionine, you are eating a high quality, complete protein meal. Beans are also an excellent source of soluble fiber and insoluble fiber – good for your cholesterol levels and good for your colon. And if you soak them right, they won’t even make you fart. Not that I think you should care. (So long as you’re not in a lift with me.)

I call my basic vegetarian slow-cooker recipe Beany Thing.

Tuesday Recipe Blogging: All About Chilli

Well, okay: not all about chilli.

I first made a pot of chilli about four years ago. Curries I was used to, but the theory and practice of chilli had passed me by. But, here, for what it’s worth, is all I know about making a big pot of hot, comforting, wonderful vegetarian chilli.

You need: beans, tomatoes, chillies. You will want, when the chilli is ready to eat, at least one of the following accompaniments: grated cheese, sour cream or thick plain yoghurt, guacamole, salsa, bread or tortillas or rice.

You can make very good use of: vegetable stock, garlic, paprika, tabasco sauce.

You may find goes well: smoked tofu, nuts, mushrooms, soy sauce, beer, wine.

Tuesday Recipe blogging: mushroom roast

Apologies for taking so long to find this. It’s been years since I made mushroom roast: it works best (in my opinion) as the main dish in a festive dinner. It’s a considerable amount of work to make, unless you have a food processor, and even if you do – don’t try to process the mushrooms in it. Slice them properly. I’m not just being pickily low-tech: you can make the breadcrumbs any way that suits you (my parents used to use child labour), you can slice the onions perfectly well in a food processor: but mushrooms turn to mush too easily if they’re fed through a processor.

The basic ingredients are: mushrooms, breadcrumb, onions, and cheese. You may also want: garlic, herbs, vegetable stock, and an egg or two.

The basic process is: cook onions in butter to a savoury, soft mess (with herbs and garlic). Add mushrooms, and cook over a low heat until the mushrooms are cooked enough to suit you. You want a fairly soft and semi-liquid paste of onions and mushrooms. Stir in the breadcrumb. If it’s too dry, add some vegetable stock – you want a fairly moist mixture. Stir in grated cheese. When you are ready to bake the roast, add an egg or two (depending on the size of the roast) and put the whole mixture in a deep, greased casserole dish and bake until it’s crusty on top.

Proportions are important.

For every kilo of mushrooms, you want a kilo of breadcrumb, 500-750 grammes of onions, and 500-750 grammes of hard cheese. This size of roast will take about 90 minutes to bake in a medium hot oven. [Update: Yes, this is a LOT of mushrooms: it makes a big savoury for a festive meal. You can always halve or even quarter the amount for a smaller dish… just keep the proportions, by weight, the same.]

I like garlic… lots of garlic… and do the obvious: subtract the weight of the garlic from the weight of the onions. See the nut roast recipe for thoughts about herbs. (There is also the foodpairing website, though I find it more fun than useful.) Instead of regular vegetable stock, you can use Marmite, a couple of teaspoonfuls in about 150ml of boiling water – do not add the whole quantity, just mix it up and stir it in until the texture looks right: you’re after a glopping consistency, soft and moist, not liquid).

This is not a vegan recipe. The cheese in the mushroom roast isn’t just there to make it coherent: the combination of cheese and mushroom is what makes this a rich, glorious dish. Figure on about one egg to every half-kilo of breadcrumb – but add the eggs one at a time, to make sure the texture stays right. You don’t want to over-egg the pudding.

Tuesday Recipe Blogging: nut roast

This is the quintessential dish of Sixties vegetarianism. (Which is when my parents became vegetarians. Yes, I have been a nutcase from birth.)

Nevertheless, nut roast is quite tasty. It is also an excellent dish to serve as the “vegetarian alternative” for a main meal where most of the diners will be tucking into the meat dish, because first of all, nut roast can be happily served with any side dish you would serve with meat, and second, you can make the basic mixture the day before, refrigerate it, and stir in an egg (if you’re using an egg, see discussion below) at the last minute before you pop it in the oven to bake it, so that it inconveniences you-the-host less than many a vegetarian alternative.

As someone who has been the sole vegetarian guest at many meals, I appreciate all the hosts who went to some trouble to ensure that I could eat my fill.

Tuesday Recipe Blogging: Cake or DEATH!

From Church of England Fundamentals, Eddie Izzard, mostly NSFW on account of he swears a lot:

“Cake or death?” That’s a pretty easy question. Anyone could answer that.
“Cake or death?”
“Eh, cake please.”
“Very well! Give him cake!”
“Oh, thanks very much. It’s very nice.”
“You! Cake or death?”
“Uh, cake for me, too, please.”
“Very well! Give him cake, too! We’re gonna run out of cake at this rate. You! Cake or death?”
“Uh, death, please. No, cake! Cake! Cake, sorry. Sorry…”
“You said death first, uh-uh, death first!”
“Well, I meant cake!”
“Oh, all right. You’re lucky I’m Church of England!”

So, cake or death?

Tuesday Recipe Blogging: Banana-Tofu Curry

I found the basic recipe for this curry in Recipe Cottage. If you’re not vegetarian and/or don’t like tofu, you can omit the tofu, or substitute it with some non-vegetarian tofu substitute, what’s the word …meat! Oh yes. That stuff.

You should read the real recipe, but basically, this is how I do it: