Eating their words

Serves: 3/4
Approx Cost: £13.00

Back again with Plenty, I find it hard to drag myself away from a cookbook this good. I’m determined to work my way through it recipe by recipe knowing a very high percentage will be brilliant.

These green pancakes were wünderbar! The lime butter was a little faffy, and by faffy I mean it just took a bit of prep thats all. The butter is a must, you can’t make these without, it just wouldnt be right. Unsalted butter with lime juice, lime zest, garlic, chilli flakes, salt, white pepper and coriander. I’ve got quite a bit left and i’m wondering if I can get away with smearing it on everything I eat from now until its finished. 

The pancake batter wasn’t exactly the same as the recipe as I only had wholemeal self raising flour and not plain. It didn’t disappoint, they were still lovely and light, probably due to my excellent egg white whisking and folding. The ‘green’ part of the recipe comes from chopped wilted spinach, spring onion and green chilli’s. I was initially worried about the amount of spice involved, but the chilli and cumin was just the right amount of heat and flavour. The butter obviously cools the tongue while then adding its own heat.

I of course made the mistake of the first pancake being ABSOLUTELY HUGE in the pan, but getting that golden brown/green colour was a cinch. As I made each one they sat in the oven keeping warm.

When all batter had been fried I topped the pancakes as instructed with a slice of the butter which slowly melted over the top. I threw some organic mixed sprouts over the top and they served to add a crunch to each mouthful. I’m considering not telling James that we have leftovers. I want them for breakfast now, and for eternity.

Serves: 2
Approx Cost: £7.01

This is fast becoming my new favourite recipe book. It must be because it made me want to try cooking tofu. Tofu for gods sake! The recipe looked pretty delicious, although the ingredients seemed strangely out of whack. 8 fresh red chillis?!?! Are you trying to blow my head off? Jeepers!

Again I decided to halve the quantities, no need to make so much food this week, still got loads of leftovers to speak of. Managed to halve this one fairly easily, still seemed like an inordinate amount of some things, but they just ‘worked’.

It was a complete faff to start with, shallow frying the tofu took quite a while longer than I expeeted, and crushing the peppercorns was almost impossible, but I stuck with it. After the faff of prepping the tofu an peppercorns the rest of the recipe was pretty easy peasy. This wasnt so healthy though, lots of oil and a hell of a lot of butter (even when I reduced it) made me think maybe i’d made a mistake. But oh no, as you well know, everything cooked in butter is gods work.

The chillis gave it an edge, but not too much surprisingly, the addition of soy and a little sugar to the sauce made it gorgeously gloopy, like a liquor, an elixir if you will. It made the tofu, taste, GREAT! I didnt even know that was possible.

My only let down was the peppercorns, the damn blasted peppercorns. I just didn’t have the strength to bash every last one to a pulp and as such they stuck out like a spare thumb on your fork. Other than replacing those for crushed ones in future, and reducing the amount of butter this recipe is a winner. Certainly converted me to tofu, and James’s reaction? “the best thing you’ve cooked so far”.

There we have it, win win.