I saw on Twitter that today marks the “International Pancake Day”. At least according to IHOP. I don’t need to go to IHOP to get the best pancakes in the world, since I rely on my trusty Dutch recipe:
Ingredients:
- one cup of buckwheat flour
- one cup of self rising flour
- 3 or 4 medium sized eggs
- a dash of salt
- about 2 teaspoons of vanilla sugar
- milk
- shortening (for baking)
Directions:
Sift the dry ingredients in a deep bowl. Add milk until you get a nice smooth batter which shouldn’t be too thick. It’s best to add most of the milk, and add a bit later to get the right viscosity.
Add the eggs one by one. And then a bit more of the milk to finish it. The batter should have about the same viscosity as syrup, not too liquid, but most certainly not too thick. Dutch pancakes are thin, like crepes.
Take a pan and bake the pancakes on both sides until golden brown. The Dutch have a variety of toppings. You can add molasses, sugar, jelly, cheese, champignon ragout, anything you like.
Since it’s Lent right now, I didn’t make bacon pancakes. But if you want to try that, you need to put a thin slice of bacon in the pan before pouring a soup spoon full of batter in the pan before baking golden brown on both sides. Bacon pancakes taste best with molasses.
Ingredients (4 servings):
- 1 small can black beans
- 1 small can kidney beans
- 1 small can chilli beans
- 1 big can of brown beans
- 1 small jar crunchy corn
- 1 can peeled tomatoes
- 2 onions
- 2 green bell peppers
- 1 clove of garlic
- 1 red chilli pepper
- 1 teaspoon chilli powder
Directions:
It’s all very simple: cut the bell peppers, garlic, pepper and onion in small pieces. Take a fairly big pot and fry it on a moderate fire. Add chilli powder and the peeled tomatoes and mix everything well together. I mash the tomatoes in smaller pieces with the spoon I use to stir everything. If everything starts simmering again, you can turn down the flame until a small fire and put the lid on the pot. Simmer for 15-20 minutes. After that you can rinse the beans and add them to the mixture. Heat it for ten minutes, add the corn and you’re done.
If you are a carnivore, you can leave out about a pound of beans and substitute that with fried loose minced beef (or pork). You would start cooking the beef and then do everything else. I advise to season the meat with meat seasoning to up the flavour a bit.
Ages ago I met handimobility in the SQPN chatroom and while we chatted, the topic changed to food. He linked to his blog with a great recipe. I browsed it and bookmarket it. Then I forgot about it. At the moment I’m doing a kind of spring cleaning. I’m not only cleaning out my house and my cupboards, but also cleaning up my PC’s hard drive and my web browser’s bookmark section. This way I stumbled over this recipe. His weblog is in French, not a problem for me, but I know a lot of other people don’t understand it. But the new recipe software on my laptop only speaks English. That’s why I’m translating it to English. I will post a review of the recipe software later, but first here’s the recipe for my followers on the internet:
Read more…
Lent is coming and since I’m “officially” Catholic now, it means there will be two Fasting Days (this year on Ash Wednesday on Feb. 25 and on Good Friday on Apr. 10) and the period in between is a time of moderation. Catholics eat less than they normally would and live a more simple life in order to prepare for Easter.
Although I’m a new Catholic, it’s not a new thing for me to do some kind of fasting during Lent. The Protestant churches I’m familiar with also do some kind of fasting, but that’s more something people individually choose for, it’s not a Protestant tradition, but a tradition a lot of Protestant people came up with in the past few years. A lot of Protestants make a ‘mistake’ though: they will also fast on Sundays, but that’s not what Catholics do. A Sunday is by its very nature a Feast Day, a day of rejoicing, although we are dialing back the rejoicing a bit during Lent: altar triptych is folded up, covering the painings at the inside, there are no flowers.
The Presbyterian Church I’m coming from has no liturgical year and people have very vague concepts on liturgy. More and more people in the Presbyterian churches think it’s a nice gesture to celebrate the Lord’s Supper on Good Friday, where in the Catholic Church this is the only day there is no Eucharist, hence no communion. The altar gets dismantled and Christ is completely absent during that day: the sanctuary lights won’t be burning. Catholics can receive Communion every day of the year, whenever they want, but NOT on Good Friday 
Read more…
Ingredients
1 pie crust ø24 cm / 9.45″) OR ± 340 gr. / 12 oz. croissant dough (Danerolles) + pea or bean weights for the pie shell + parchment or wax paper.
500 gr. / 1.1 lbs apples (Belle de Boskoop) or any sour/tart apple)
sugar (to taste)
cinnamon (to taste)
lemon or lime juice
shortening
1 container (± 240 gr. / 1/2 pound) cream cheese (e.g. mascarpone)
1 package instant vanilla pudding mix
± 335 ml. / ±11 oz. milk
a bit of grated lemon rind
± 2 tbsp. apricot jelly
Read more…
It’s very simpe to make your own pita breads. They will taste so much better than those prefabricated ones you buy in the supermarket. And if you’re really in a hurry: you can put both the dough as the breads in the freezer!
Ingredients:
- 400 grams / 14 oz. flour
- ¼ litre / 8 ½ oz. lukewarm water (about 40 °C / 104 °F)
- 4 grams / 1 teaspoon active dry yeast
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
Directions:
- Put all ingredients in the order listed in the baking tin and select the ‘dough’ programme. When the program has ended, leave the dough in the tin for another half hour to allow it to rise properly. After that, remove the dough from the tin and divide it into 12 equal little balls. Roll these out on a flour-covered working space until you have small pancake like patties with a diameter of about 12 cm or 5 inches.
Find the middle of each pattie and make a cut with a knife from the centre to the side. You’ll be able to roll up the pattie in the shape of a cone. Put the cone upright on your workspace, with the base sitting on your counter. Press it to a flat pattie again with your flat hand. Roll it out again in the shape of a flat little breat AT ONLY ONE SIDE! This way you create an air pocket in the middle of a bread.
- Grease a baking plate and put the breads on it. Allow the breads to rise for another 10-15 minute, covered with a towel.
- Bake the breads in a preheated oven of 220 °C / 425°F / gas oven mark 7 (if you have a convection oven, subtract 10% from the temperature). You can put a small bowl filled with water in the oven together with the bread during baking to avoid scorching.
Like I said, pita breads can be frozen. Make sure to use good quality freezer bags, to avoid freezer burn.
Ingredients:
-
about one pound of flour
- a dash of salt
- about a tablespoon of vanilla sugar
- milk
- 3 eggs (medium size)
- a dash of arachis oil / peanut oil
- icecream (vanilla flavour)
- grated coconut
- summer fruit (raspberries, strawberries and the like)
- icing sugar
Description:
Take a deep bowl to make the batter. Add flour, vanilla sugar, salt and mix it with a whisk. Pour in the milk and oil. Whisk until a nice batter is forming. Add the eggs one by one and some more milk, if necessary. Whisk until you get a smooth batter. I add oil to the batter to prevent getting those greasy pancakes. By adding oil to the batter the pancakes wil stay dry and soft.
Heat a frying pan on the stove and add a little bit butter, just to prevent the first batch from sticking to the pan. Spoon a soup ladle ful of batter in the hot pan and bake the pancakes on both sides until they are golden brown on a medium fire. The cue to flip the pancake is for me when the pancake’s top is getting dry. Flipping won’t me messy that way. You can heat some cherries, strawberries or raspberries to top the pancake if you want.
Eat them warm, put a big scoop of vanilla ice on top of the pancake, add some fruit and decorate with grated coconut and icing sugar. A real summer lunch treat!
Tip: Roll leftover pancakes up between two sheets of tin foil and put them in a ziploc bag. You can put them in the freezer to have a quick lunch or even breakfast available: thaw them, rol them out and microwave them and they are ready to eat.
Ingredients for 4 servings:
1 tin chickpeas (400 grams / ± 11-12 oz.)- 1 sweet onion, minced
- ½ to 1 tablespoon dried parsley gedroogde peterselie
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon ground cumin
- ½ teaspoon ground coriander/cilantro seeds
- 1 teaspoon salt
- a dash of freshly ground black pepper
- a dash cayenne pepper (or another kind of spicy pepper to taste)
- 1 teaspoon lemon juice (try lime juice for a different zing)
- ½ teaspoon of baking powder
- 1 tablespoon olive oil, extra virgin, cold pressing (I always use Carbonell)
- about 100-125 grams / 3.5-4.5 oz. dried bread crumbs
- oil for frying. DON’T use olive oil for this, because it will start to smoke at high temperatures. I prefer using arachis oil / peanut oil, because of its higher smoking point.
Tip for vegans: use agar instead of the egg to bind the falafel.
Read more…
I saw on Twitter that today marks the “International Pancake Day”. At least according to IHOP. I don’t need to go to IHOP to get the best pancakes in the world, since I rely on my trusty Dutch recipe:
Comments