Aubergine & Eggplant

Perfecting Pancake Technique

I grew up in a small village in rural Canada for a large part of my childhood, and one of my abiding memories in that big old farmhouse was my father making pancakes on weekend mornings. CBC burbling away on the radio, drifts of snow outside that made everything else eerily quiet and a quick finger on the side of the crusty maple syrup can.

When I moved out, it didn't take me long to go to pancake making for comfort on weekend mornings. Sometimes I would feed a horde of drunken friends at 3am, which is technically a weekend morning but in a slightly different sense. Of course, pancakes could always be had from a local diner, functioning a bit like ballast in the rolling ship that was my hungover stomach.

Since the big move from Canada to England, one of the things we've missed most is pancakes, as we know them. The fluffy, thick and comforting pancakes of the old country. So I set about making the best ones possible.

Nigella's recipe for 'American Breakfast Pancakes' from How to Be a Domestic Goddess has been the best I've found for using UK ingredients, but her method doesn't work for me. I've spent five years fine-tuning this to yield the fluffiest pancakes with the fewest amount of dirty dishes. 

Erin's Canadian Pancakes 
Adapted from Nigella Lawson's American Breakfast Pancakes

100g all-purpose flour
140g self-raising flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon sugar 

2 large eggs
30g butter, melted
300ml milk

1. Melt your butter in the microwave in a 2 pint measuring jug (or something similar). Set aside to cool.

2. Combine all dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Don't bother getting a spoon dirty for this, you're not going to use it later - just use your hands. 

3. Dump the eggs into the 2 pint container you have the butter in, and use a small whisk or a fork to beat them until you've got a mostly uniform consistency. Add the milk to this same jug and whisk it together with the butter and eggs.

4. Pour your liquids into the dry ingredients all at once and use the whisk to mix it together. Now don't over mix here. You want to combine the ingredients so you have a gloopy batter, it shouldn't be anywhere as liquid as British pancake batter. Whisk gently until the flour is incorporated, but if there are small lumps, don't go crazy trying to get rid of them. If your batter is too liquid, add flour a teaspoon at a time until it's more like wallpaper paste. If it's too solid, add milk, again a little at a time. 

5. Put a good quality non-stick frying pan on medium heat. You're going to have to adjust the heat throughout the cooking process, so don't expect to walk away at any point from now on. Don't be tempted to use any butter here to fry in, it just ruins your first three pancakes. Fill a large squeeze bottle, with the nozzle chopped halfway down its length, with the batter.

6. Squeeze your first pancake on the pan and watch it carefully. You want to flip it when the surface is covered in bubbles that are just about to burst, only then. Don't be tempted to keep flipping, this is a single-flip operation here. Your first pancake is likely to be pale on the first side and that's fine, it's your pancake. Cook's prerogative you know, eating the first one. Use what you've learned about the heat and how long it's taking to adjust on the second pancake. You have to constantly monitor the heat until you get used to how long it takes to get a perfect light brown.

A note on serving: Personally, I subscribe to the informal shout from the kitchen when the first ones are ready. It does mean I eat my own standing next to the hob, but I don't mind. 

A note on pancake size: 12-15cm in diameter is a good start. It depends on your flipping device and size of pan, but I find much bigger than that makes for rubbery edges and more flipping accidents.

Maple syrup: This is critical. These pancakes are to be served with a little melted butter on top and PROPER MAPLE SYRUP. Read the label carefully, weird corn syrupy abominations can be called maple syrup and contain no more than 10% real from-a-tree maple syrup. It will be expensive, but I promise you, it's worth it. Waitrose and Marks & Spencer both sell bottles of Real Maple Syrup from Canada with a big maple leaf on the front. I prefer the No.3 Amber from Waitrose. You want to start with a teaspoon on your pancake to start, it's intensely sweet. Unless you're my husband, who likes about 3 tablespoons per pancake - but that requires a childhood spent building up a tolerance, so you know, take it easy at first.

And finally, streaky bacon is the natural accompaniment here, to get a bit covered in maple syrup as well for an authentic experience.

VARIATIONS

Blueberry pancakes are the obvious thing here, and all it requires is adding the blueberries to each pancake after you've squirted them into the pan. Do wait 10-15 seconds before adding them or they'll sink straight through. You want to have a perfect brown side and a fruit-studded underside. You'll have to leave the pancake to cook slightly longer on the first side, because when you flip, the blueberries prevent the batter touching the pan as effectively. When flipped, push down gently to get as much pan contact as you can, but don't lean into it or you'll burst the blueberries. 

My father used to make orange waffles (similar batter recipe, I haven't mastered this yet though) by replacing part of the milk with orange juice and adding orange zest. These were incredible orange-scented pieces of heaven, and when I get the hang of them, I will post about it. He occasionally made pancakes the same way, so I know it can be done.

Enjoy your morning!

Parmesan-crusted courgette

Celia Brooks Brown kindly included my tweeted suggestion of what to do with courgettes, quickly, in her Urban Farmer column in The Times. Which, in 140 characters, is a bit of a challenge. My suggestion went like this: “coat medium courgette slices in balsamic & grated parm, then dry fry”.

Here's the verbose version.

Parmesan-crusted courgettes

2 or 3 small courgettes, sliced into coins about 5mm thick, or those fancy long oblong slices
Balsamic vinegar
A good pile of finely grated Parmesan cheese, or go for something similar but cheaper, like Gran Padano

1. Put your courgette slices into a bowl and just cover with the vinegar. Leave them to soak for a couple minutes.

2. Put the Parmesan on a small plate, and dredge each slice in it. I found it easier to put the slice on the Parmesan and then pile some cheese on top and press down with the tongs. 

3. Heat a non-stick frying pan on medium-high heat. The non-stick element is critical here, by the way. Fry your slices for a minute or so a side - keep an eye on these and don't wander off, they burn quickly. Some of them won't keep their cheesy coating so well, that's okay. Just scoop up the crusty, vinegary cheese bits and crumble over your courgette slices. This is why the non-stick pan is necessary, this could get very very messy if you have to scrape this off. Serve immediately. 

Ocado iPhone app

I've long been dependent on Ocado for harder to find, and heavier, ingredients delivered to my door by friendly drivers who talk to my dog nicely and hardly ever have substitutions. Until recently, no flat of mine has been near a grocery store larger than a train station Sainsbury's. Makes it challenging to find anything out of the ordinary, like, say brown sugar or more than one kind of lettuce.

So when I was browsing through the iPhone App Store this morning and discovered the Ocado app, new yesterday it seems, and not officially released until 13 July, I was maybe a bit too excited. 

Brilliantly, you can do your shopping from your iPhone, check and amend an order you've already placed, or just keep a running list on it and book a delivery slot when you're ready. When you open the app, it shows you the earliest delivery appointment available right away. I was able to check an order I had already placed when I was out in one of those 'did I order lemons or not?' moments. The interface is clean and easy to use too.

The only downside I can see initially is if you've never used Ocado before and aren't sure they deliver to

your area - there's no way to find out without downloading the app and creating an account etc. 

If you've used them before, however, it's well worth a try.

Balti lamb burgers

I've been trying to prepare extra food and freeze it for the impending birth of my first little one, as everyone tells you you should. However, it taunts me there in the freezer, yummy lasagna, curry sauces in little containers.

So needless to say we've nearly eaten it all, already. But I have a few weeks to replenish it. One of the things I have stashed in there are quantities of a basic curry sauce that can go several different ways quite easily by adding ground almonds and cream for korma, chopped tomatoes and some spices for balti or rogan josh. I had defrosted a container for a chicken curry that didn't quite happen, and then happily decided to get some mince lamb from the Ginger Pig the other day. The balti lamb burger was born. 

I would definitely make the curry sauce at some other point, freeze it in batches, and then whip one out for the burger recipe. Making it just for this might be just too much faffing. Follow the basic curry sauce recipe here at delicious. magazine, definitely worth using a frozen then defrosted one for the intensity of flavour. I split my curry sauce into 6 quantities as there's only two of us I usually cook for.

Balti lamb burgers with quick cucumber raita

Makes 5 burgers

For the burgers

1/2 medium onion

2 garlic cloves

1 quantity of basic curry sauce, defrosted

1 tsp of garam masala balti (mine comes from Seasoned Pioneers and I'd highly recommend them)

500 grams good quality lamb mince

Groundnut oil

For the cucumber raita

(These quantities are approximate, taste as you go)

plain Greek yoghurt

cumin seeds

cucumber

Pitta breads and halved cherry tomatoes to serve

1. Whizz the half an onion and the garlic cloves in a food processor until they're essentially finely chopped, whatever size you're happy to find in a burger. 

2. Add the onions, garlic, curry sauce and garam masala balti into a bowl and mix it with your hands until it's well combined. Form into 5 burgers and leave on a plate to settle down. Put a grill pan on high heat.

3. Chop the cucumber into small chunks and add to the plain yoghurt in another bowl. Dry fry the cumin seeds until they smell fragant, tossing them often - this should only take two minutes or so, so don't wander off. Add cumin seeds to the yoghurt and cucumber.

4. Your grill pan should be nice and hot by now. Pour some groundnut oil into your palm and massage the burgers gently. Brush them if you're squeamish about this kind of thing. Put them on the grill pan and leave them alone for a good 4 minutes. Flip once, leave them for another 3-4 minutes. Cooking time depends on the thickness of your burgers, so adjust as necessary.

5. Take the burgers off the heat and let them rest for a couple minutes, and use the flaming hot grill pan to heat up the pitta breads, push them down on the pan using your hand if you're brave or whatever tool is to hand. You'll have to do this in batches. 

6. I served this with a pitta per burger, with cherry tomatoes and the cucumber raita in two bowls and we went at it. Make sure you have plenty of napkins to hand, these are messy.

Recipe organisation

There are many ways to organise your recipes - handwritten cards, software like SousChef or BigOven, or websites like Allrecipes. 

None of these particularly work for me, as many of the recipes I want to keep come from magazines or the newspaper. I had been hauling around my own bodyweight or more in old food mags from flat to flat - every time we move my husband holds up a battered and splattered four-year-old copy of Food Observer Monthly and asks plaintively: 'Do you really still want this?'

So, to solve the problem, I invested in five A4 portfolio books with clear plastic pockets inside. I spent about a week filleting all my old food magazines into piles. I only separated the recipes into high-level categories of sweet things/baking of all kinds, Asian and Asian-inspired things, pasta and related and then a catch all of meat and veggie main dishes. One of the things I love about food magazines is the joy of flipping through and becoming randomly inspired. I use the internet for specific searches mainly, it's just not as satisfying to skim loads of blogs and recipe sites. The plastic pockets keep the pages clean too, which is a nice, because I'm a bit messy.

How do you store and organise your recipes?

Bolognese amplified

My husband loves spaghetti bolognese desperately, and I have a soft spot for it too. I usually make it from scratch, in a haphazard way, with whatever I have to hand. Sometimes there are carrots, sometimes not - you know. One day I was idly reading the box my harissa paste bottle came in, and it suggested adding a spoonful into a bolognese. Sure enough, I had half a jar languishing in the fridge the next time I made bolognese... And what a revelation. It's like worchestire sauce in gravy - it disappears, taste-wise, but somehow makes the flavour deepen. I find a couple of teaspoons is all you need, but taste as you go because harissa is spicy stuff.

Simple Mint Fizz

Mint in your garden is one of those things that seems like a good idea at the time, but then one morning you go out there and notice that you have not a patch of mint, but a field. When I was 12, my mum and I discovered such a field of mint on the little hill shaded behind the carport, where we never went. It stretched for about four metres, and the mint was waist high. Hmmm. We harvested piles of it and made tsatsiki to go on Greek burgers (Mum, please post the recipe!), we preserved the leaves with egg white and sugar... everything. 

So when I was presented with an ever-widening patch of mint leftover from previous tenants, I decided to hack it back right away. The simplest thing to do with my pile of mint was to make some simple mint syrup. I'm nearly seven months pregnant now, and getting incredibly sick of insipid options for non-alcoholic drinks, so I wanted to make something interesting to drink. I completely underestimated how incredible fresh mint syrup would be... this is not so much a recipe as a starting point. It would be brilliant with vodka, not that I would know. *sigh*. I made up a jug of this for a garden party and everyone came back for more. 

You could use the syrup over a cake, ice cream, all sorts of things. 

Simple Mint Fizz

Simple Mint Syrup

1 cup water 

1 cup granulated sugar

Three big fistfuls of fresh mint leaves, washed

-

Tonic water

1. Boil the water with the sugar, stirring continuously until it's dissolved. 

2. Take the pot off the heat, and push the mint into the sugar water, reserving a few leaves. Leave it - as long as possible, but at least until it's cool.

3. Strain the liquid into a container. You can now keep this into the fridge for quite awhile. Mine has been in the fridge for weeks, but don't quote me on that. The syrup works best after it's had a night in the fridge really.

4. To make the fizz, put some ice in a highball glass, pour in half a finger of mint syrup, then fill with tonic water. Taste it, add more syrup if you like it sweeter. Garnish with a couple mint leaves and you're good to go.

Growing your own vegetables

 

I've never been good at growing things, so when we moved into this new flat with a raised bed in the back garden, I didn't think I could do much with it.

But the lure of trying out this gardening thing in the privacy of my own back garden so no one could see how many mistakes I made was too much... and so I went a bit, well, crazy.

I did all the things you're supposed to do: watch too many episodes of Gardener's World and Beechgrove, order random inappropriate and outlandish seeds and have dreams about a bounty of vegetables instantaneously. Patience has never been one of my best qualities, so some would say gardening isn't really the best kind of thing for me.

Anyway, I've gone ahead and planted a bunch of things anyway, some of them by following the proper instructions and some things by just chucking a pile of seeds on the compost and hoping for the best. Thankfully, the seeds I've thrown out there - lettuces and salad crops - are sort of meant to be thrown.

We've got tomatoes I've grown from seed - Moneymaker and Gardener's Delight, lots of potatoes both in the garden and a couple patio bags - Charlottes and Foremosts, mint leftover from before, some struggling rocket, flat leaf parsley, two pak choi which we've already eaten, some thyme and a big patch of assorted lettuces - some Lolla Rosa, some random bowl lettuce, some random salad seeds I got free with a catalogue or something. There's also some mangetout and climbing french beans I've just put in, and some courgettes are sprouting on the window sill. 

Of course, at the moment there's not a whole lot to actually eat from the garden yet. Waiting, waiting, waiting. I'm not always good at this part.

Edgware Road Yoghurt Sauce

I used to live in Paddington, around the corner from the mainline rail station and a quick walk from the hundreds of Lebanese restaurants on Edgware Road. We always meant to visit them more than we did, but every time we made it into one, I fell a little bit more in love with the tongue-numbing garlic sauce served with the grilled meat. Somehow it didn't have that sharp edge that hummus can have, and it goes so incredibly well with well-spiced grilled lamb or chicken. 

I tried to recreate it in spirit, more than texture, because the sauce you're served in those places is much denser than this is. I use my version to marinate chicken and pork in as well, serving a fresh batch on the side. And really, the coriander is my own addition... so you're seeing how far this is from the original but trust me, it's a bbq/picnic staple in my house and once you try it you'll be shocked how good yet how simple it is.

This is a taste-as-you-go recipe, so adjust to your needs.

Edgware Road Yoghurt Sauce

200ml of plain yoghurt (I like using Greek yoghurt, but runnier kinds work too)

1 lemon, both for zest and juice

1 tsp granulated freeze-dried garlic (in London, I buy this at Whole Foods - adjust this to your taste)

3 tbsp whole cumin seeds

1 bunch fresh coriander

Sea salt to taste

1. Pour the yoghurt into a bowl and zest the lemon into it. Then juice the same lemon into the bowl as well and mix it to loosen the sauce.

2. Smash the coriander seeds and cumin seeds with a mortar and pestle until the seeds are smashed up a bit and you're smelling the heavenly scent of cumin. Dump it in the yoghurt bowl. 

3. Chop the fresh coriander and add to yoghurt mixture. Taste it and see if it needs more garlic or salt. 

Serve it with warm flatbread, alongside grilled meats or use it as a marinade. 

It's really flexible and I add chopped cucumbers sometimes, chives, mint, finely chopped red onion. It's the lemon-cumin seed-garlic triumvirate that gives it that wonderful taste. 

The joys of frozen lemongrass

 

I love making a good thai curry, but I find having the necessary ingredients around for a truly good one a bit of pain. I can never just rustle one up without a trip to fairly large local shop. I mean, why bother if you're not going to dump in some lime leaves and lemongrass right?

I've inherited my mother's healthy fear/irritation/unwillingness to pay for pre-packaged and cut up ingredients. However, I am now officially in love with these frozen chopped up lime leaves and lemongrass. There's also chopped up garlic and shallots in the same line, and I've got them all in my freezer. For £1.20 or so it's really worth it, considering I never get through fresh lemongrass before it goes soggy in my fridge and I've paid at least that.