Salaric Cooking

1 egg

cup full of flour

2 cups of milk

Mix together untill you have a runny but slightly thicker than milk batter – warning if you use an electric whisk you will froth the mix and have to wait for it to settle again! The amount of flour added can be varied depending on taste.

I normally do a minimium of four eggs. The eggs can be replaced with egg replacer for vegans and Hindus, the milk can be replaced with either goats milk (infact the ones in the photos are made with goats milk), water or orange juice depending on taste or dietry needs.

I use a small frying pan which takes about half a ladle full of batter. Place the frying pan on a medium heat – it is easy to burn them so this lower heat is actually quiet important – We find the best results come from putting a little bit of vegitable oil in the pan for the first pancake – through this redures it uneatable as it is horribly oily but it prevents subsequent pancakes from sticking.

My friend Seth insists that egg replacer is vile and says he makes pancakes by:

i use flour, milk, baking soda (or baking powder), pinch of salt, butter in frying pan (he is a fantastic cook)

Staking the cooked pancakes one on top of the other keeps them warm:

We then put them out on the table with a selection of toppings – this year these were: Banoffee suace Chocolate suace Toffee source Strewberry source Maple syrip Lemon juice Limes cut in half Oranges cut in half Demerara sugar Soft brown muscovado suga Bean sprouts (grown under the kitchen sink!) Grated cheese Marshmellows Nutella Condensed Milk Chopped Bannana

I let Jean pick her own toppings: Marshmellow Banoffee sourcce bean sprouts Cheese – she liked it and yes it was all in one pancake!

I personally discovered that my slightly peppery bean sprouts tasted great with condensed milk!

I picked up recipy card in Morrisons for Pastry Hearts and though we didn’t actually have the right ingredients my husband cooked us a version of the recipy for our valentines meal. So here is his version:

Chopped up two shallots, half a yellow pepper, and a few cherry tomatoes

Put them in a shallow dish

Added a splash of oil infused with sun dried tomatoes and a splash of balsamic vinegar

Roasted in the oven at… 200C? for… 15 minutes?

Meanwhile, roll puff pastry to ~3mm thick

Cut out two heart shapes

Scored a smaller heart 0.5cm in

Smeared milk around the resulting 0.5cm border

Put it in the oven for a bit to make it rise… 10 minutes or so?

Took it out, pushed the middle down

Spooned in the roasted stuff

Add chunks of feta

Back in the oven until it looked good

He boiled some new potatoes up and added ground pepper to them, and served it with a mixed leaf winter salad. We also cracked out the purple champainge flutes from our wedding meal and had fizzy flavoured water in them!

I personally would have used two sizes of heart cooky cutter and made a boarder that had more pastry on it. Al had to cut a heart shape out of paper mainly due to the fact that our little girl had bitten the bottom of the template I had been using for the heart decorations!

I know this is probably not that relivant and I really do need to dig out the photos I took of the cheese and bacon, cheeses and chicken, cheese and onion and sweet pancakes I make but I just wanted to show how I find my craft and cooking activities tend to over lap.

I needed to send a card around shrove Tuesday and so I made a flipping pancake card which can be seen on Salaric craft! Complete with how I did it 🙂

Enjoy pancake day – I love to put tangerine segments in warm pancakes with a smear of nutella and then wrap it up and eat it whilst burning my fingers – I promise I’ll try and sort those recipies out soon 🙂

There is a big drive at the moment to try and get people to eat seasonally so I thought I’d have a little look at what Mrs Beaton thought on the subject.

Her book is not my cup of tea but it does have lots of useful information in it.

FISH.–Barbel, brill, carp, cod may be bought, but is not so good as in January, crabs, crayfish, dace, eels, flounders, haddocks, herrings, lampreys, lobsters, mussels, oysters, perch, pike, plaice, prawns, shrimps, skate, smelts, soles, sprats, sturgeon, tench, thornback, turbot, whiting.

I haven’t even heard of some of these fish so I think I’ll have to do some investigating!

MEAT.–Beef, house lamb, mutton, pork, veal.

Veal is an iffy one morally these days though this is apparently only white veal, pink veal is ok – again I will endervour to find out more!

POULTRY.–Capons, chickens, ducklings, tame and wild pigeons, pullets with eggs, turkeys, wild-fowl, though now not in full season.

Again a few things here I have never heard of such as Capons and pullets.

GAME.–Grouse, hares, partridges, pheasants, snipes, woodcock.

Same for this section hence making all I can into links!

VEGETABLES.–Beetroot, broccoli (purple and white), Brussels sprouts, cabbages, carrots, celery, chervil, cresses, cucumbers (forced), endive, kidney-beans, lettuces, parsnips, potatoes, savoys, spinach, turnips,–various herbs.

Interesting I wonder if they have them stored as I thought some of this definatly would be affected by winter frosts such as lettuce. Again more investigation – if anyone has any light to shed let me know.

FRUIT.–Apples (golden and Dutch pippins), grapes, medlars, nuts, oranges, pears (Bon Chrétien), walnuts, dried fruits (foreign), such as almonds and raisins; French and Spanish plums; prunes, figs, dates, crystallized preserves.

Interesting that she adds the ‘forgien’ food into the seasonal like this. I feel that buying seasonal is probably going to be coupled with local in todays scheme of things. Especially as we are supposed to be reducing waste and the carbon footprint of what we eat in this country and our local economy could do with the boost of local buying. Some of the things like snipes didn’t even have a wikipedia page – unless Mrs Beeton ment a computer game which I somehow doubt as computers didn’t actually exist back then!