Reciplace

Pancake Day Recipes

I'm already getting excited about Pancake Day (Shrove Tuesday)!!  It's a bit late this year (March 8, 2011), not smushed up against Valentine's Day like last year. 

Every year I like to dust off my pancake pan (circa 1962) and whip up a selection of sweet and savoury pancakes for dinner.   Rhubarb, whipped cream, strawberries, and classic lemon all make wonderful pancake fillers for sweet pancakes - as do ham, cheese, pesto and smoked salmon for savoury ones. 

Check out my favourite list of pancake day recipes - there's guaranteed to be something you'll flip for!  (Har har)

Happy Pancake Day!

Eggy Nest (egg and mashed potato) for breakfast

Every week the veg box arrives, and every week it contains a bag of potatoes the size of carry-on luggage.  We're not really a meat and potatoes household, so we often find ourselves with bags and bags of potatoes piling up on the vegetable rack. 

New year, new start.  After coming back from a fabulous three week holiday in everyone's favourite North American country, I decided I was going to use the potatoes up each and every week before the next bag arrives.  Being 90% vegetarian, it's going to be tough - meat and potatoes just go together so well!

So, the first weekend back, and I pulled out an old favourite breakfast recipe that my mum used to make all the time when I was growing up.  It uses up leftover mash potato, and has tons of protein to start your morning off right.  It isn't filled with tons of different coloured vegetables, so it's not normally the kind of thing I make, but it's bloody tasty.

It's called Eggy Nest.  You simply line a bowl with leftover mash, crack in some eggs (I used 3, oink), and cover with lots of cheddar or red leicester cheese, salt and pepper.   Cover the bowl with clingfilm, and microwave for 4-5 minutes. 

Can you believe I used to get this for breakfast on a school morning?  Heaven.....

Crumpets

Mmmmm - what a weekend breakfast!   Homemade crumpets are ten billion thousand times better than icky store bought ones.  But notice the difference?  They are not disc-shaped.   This is what happens when you don't own "crumpet rings", and have to use egg rings instead.  And when your egg rings are square and heart shaped.  Makes for pretty crumpets though!

Crumpets

450g plain flour
300mL warm water
300mL warm milk
10g salt
10g fresh yeast
vegetable oil

Mix the flour, milk, water and yeast into a large bowl and leave to rest, covered for an hour.  Make sure it's a large bowl, as mine bubbled up and spilled off the counter and on to the floor!

After an hour, add the salt and stir well.  Wipe a large flat pan with oil, and heat to a medium temperature.

Place the rings in the middle of the pan, and pour batter until just at the top of the ring.  Cook for 5 minutes on one side (bubbles should be appearing and it should result in "ooohing" and "wow, it looks like real crumpets!" from any bystanders).  Flip the crumpets over and cook for 1-2 minutes on the other side.  Pop them onto a cooling rack, or a plate in the microwave to keep warm and enjoy them while they're warm!!    Jam and cheese on mine, thank you!

Yummy leeks and eggs for breakfast

This is a Sunday staple in our house.  Perfect for mornings when you sleep in a little late, and fancy some brunch.  (Brunch is my favourite meal, followed closely by linner.)  It's so easy and sooooo yum, it's great to make when you have guests staying over as it looks like hard work.

All you need is leeks, soya milk (I've also used double cream), eggs, and grainy mustard.  We make this dish so often, that it's earned it's own concatenated name, "Leggs". 

Using one leek per person, finely slice the leek and sauté in a frying pan of butter and olive oil.  When it starts to go a little soft, add a few tablespoons of soya milk, and a good few dollops of mustard.  Sauté 5 minutes more until the mixture is very very soft.

In a ramekin (one per person), line the edges with the leek mixture, then crack two eggs over the top.  Carefully pour in a small spoonful of soya milk, season generously with salt and pepper, and microwave with clingfilm wrapped tightly over the ramekin. 

How long you microwave is up to you and how much you like jiggly bits of egg.   I usually cook mine for 3 minutes, and The Husband's for 5.  Keep in mind that the egg will keep cooking after you remove it from the microwave.  Remove the film, stir, and let cool before eating. 

Green Tea Pancakes

On our penultimate morning in Japan, we ordered room service breakfast in what is surely one of the most upmarket hotels in the world - the Tokyo Mandarin Oriental. 

After a quick glance over the menu, I immediately decided on Green Tea Pancakes.  What red blooded Canadian can turn down pancakes? And since I'd become addicted to Green Tea Powder (matcha) while in Japan, it was the obvious choice.

Of course, they were gorgeous.... I doused them with maple syrup and mopped up every last crumb.  I thought about making them when I got back home, but it turns out the recipe is just to add a tbsp of matcha powder when you are mixing your dry pancake ingredients together.  Easy!

I haven't been able to actually find matcha powder since I got home, so these are hotel photos!  I'll have to check out the Japan Centre in London so I can recreate this delicacy.  Then I just need to figure out how to recreate the enormous soft Mandarin Oriental bed, the silk bags of tea, the 36th floor view of Tokyo......  

Traditional Japanese Breakfast

In most of the places I've traveled, the breakfasts are pretty similar.   Maybe they give you slices of cheese in Germany, or lots of different meats in Prague, but it's all pretty bog standard.  Not so in Japan!!  Here is our first Japanese breakfast, in a lovely ryokan called Fujitomita, looking out onto Mount Fuji. 

All Japanese breakfasts consist of steamed rice, miso soup, and various bits of pickled vegetables.  You will get a bit of green or black tea to wash it down with.  This is the basic breakfast, but if you are being served breakfast in a nice inn (or presumably someone's home), you will get a few other dishes to go with it.

 This particular morning our extra dishes were an egg, cracked onto some lettuce - very simple but very fresh and tasty, some lightly steamed broccoli with sesame seasoning, various types of seaweed, soft and delicious, some fruit, a little bit of radish, and .... the main attraction... an entire fish!  

I've only been confronted with an entire fish body on a plate a handful of times in my life.   This was the first time I was told to eat the entire thing!  The fish is cooked for 7 hours, and so the whole body becomes soft and edible.  Horrors!   

The entire meal was prepared so beautifully, and tasted incredible, so I gave it a go.  I started with his stomach, then his back... all very sweet and sticky and soft.  I even ate his spine.  

I'm sorry to admit it, dear readers, but I did not make it as far as his face and tail.  I just couldn't do it.  I did get brave later on in the trip and eat an entire fish (minus the tail, which looked like a brush), but on that particular morning underneath Mount Fuji, I just couldn't pull it off.   

The Husband ate the entire thing though - brave soul!  I really should have done it, as it was so tasty, but the entire meal was fantastic!  I did get pretty addicted to pickles and rice and miso for breakfast, and now that we're back in the UK, musli just isn't doing it for me....

The Best Way to Poach an Egg

There are few things I love more than a good old poached egg on toast for breakfast.  Except whenever I try to make them, they always come out watery and stringy and all over the place.  Or tasting like vinegar, because that's what you're supposed to use to 'coagulate' the egg.  What is the problem with poached eggs?!?  Why can't I make them?!?

Then, my friand-baking friend at work sent me a link to a site that shows the best way to poach an egg.  You drop the egg into the boiling water in a ball of clingfilm!   Just like when you bring a fish home from the pet shop!  Well of course we just had to try it.  Check it out!

You crack an egg into a ramekin or small bowl lined with cling film (Seran wrap for you Canadians!), and then twist the cling film until you have a little bag.   Just drop your bags of raw egg goo into the boiling water, eh voila!  We cooked ours for about 6 minutes, as the helping husband gets a case of the heeby geebies about runny egg. 

Success!  Impressive breakfast eggs!   This one happened to be with beans, cheese and pitta bread... mmmm!

 

Toast with Smoked Salmon (Lox)

Sundays are all about breakfast, aren't they?  Doesn't matter if you get up at 8am (like I did today), or at 11am (like I did last weekend).  The first thing you have to do is get up and plan your special weekend breakfast.

This is one that we always have when we stay at our favourite B&B in Amsterdam, Boogaard's.  I can never make it taste as good as Peter can, but I can get pretty close.  The key ingredient is good quality, fresh smoked salmon, and fresh, warm bread or bagels.  Peter bakes his bagels fresh, and we make fresh bread (in our bread maker). 

First, spread a generous amount of cream cheese on the bread or bagels.  Sprinkle over the cream cheese some thinly sliced shallots, red onion or spring onion.  Layer the smoked salmon on top, and squeeze a wedge of lemon over top.  Finish with some fresh cracked black pepper, and serve with extra lemon wedges on the side.