Category: batter

Categories
batter chocolate coffee food

eggless pancakes with coffee syrup

I’m a big fan of coffee. I’m pretty sure I was drinking coffee from when I was about 5 years old, which I’m not sure is particularly appropriate but has led to a lifelong love affair. Sunday mornings meant a pot of filter on, and everywhere I worked I’ve kickstarted a coffee club. When Puro Fairtrade sent me some samples of their Fairtrade coffee brands, I wasted no time in trying it out.

Puro are a brand that believe passionately in ethically produced coffee. There’s an absolute wealth of material on their site, including videos of the farmers, working with South African farmers, schools and forestry. You can’t deny the moral background to their operation. Go check out the videos.

The coffees themselves? The Noble was rich and dark, with a satisfying sweetness. I found the Fuerte a little bland, while it had a kick it was difficult to distinguish any real subtelty from it. For this recipe I’ve used the much more satisfying, chocolatey Organic for this syrup, and paired it with an chocolate chip pancake.

I had no eggs in the house for this American-style pancake recipe. Oddly, the texture was no different from when I’d used eggs, so I probably won’t bother in future. The dark and sweet coffee syrup slathers nicely over the dense, fluffy pancakes. A perfect springtime treat, especially with some blueberries in there too for a little sharpness.

Want more pancake inspiration? Try this one from Voucherbox

Eggless pancakes with coffee syrup (makes about 6 – 10):

For the pancakes:

150g flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

10g sugar

Pinch salt

20g dark chocolate, chopped

1 teaspoon vanilla paste

1 tablespoon water

Whole milk

Large knob of butter

For the syrup:

300ml coffee

150g caster sugar

  1. First make the syrup. Heat the coffee and sugar together in a saucepan. Boil fast until it has reduced by half. I pour mine into a cafetiere to cool and I think it’s kinda cute to serve it from there too.
  2. Get a frying pan over a medium heat. For the pancake batter, mix all the dry ingredients, then add the vanilla, water and enough milk to make a thick, gloopy batter. Melt the butter in your frying pan and pour this back into the mix (the remaining grease in the pan will be just enough to cook your pancakes). Ladle in the batter and cook until bubbling on the raw side. Flip and cook until browned on the other side. Keep warm on a hot plate until the rest are cooked.
Categories
batter mushroom onion pork

pork & mushrooms with onion yorkshires and creamed onion gravy

Snuggle down, because it’s cold and wet out there. Time for a sausage ‘n’ starch dinner to both fill up and warm up.

This started, as many of my recipes do, from a single ingredient and spiralled out from there. Knorr sent onion gravy pots to try. You whisk a blob of jelly into simmering water and it creates a savoury sauce. The flavour is nice although it has a faint flour back note to it. Some years ago in New York I tried a creamed gravy and it was the business, so creme fraiche is a nod to that amazing condiment.

I paired it with pork and mushrooms to make a satisfying, meaty dinner. Onion gravy was always destined to go with Yorkshire pudding, so an onion-flavoured Yorkshire seemed to be the perfect partner.

If you’re looking for something to make you snuggle up of a brisk evening, this should tick the boxes. It’d be great with sausages too.

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pork & mushrooms with onion yorkshires and creamed onion gravy

Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 15 minutes
Total Time 20 minutes
Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • Vegetable oil
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 tablespoons heaped flour
  • Some milk
  • 1 red onion sliced
  • 2 pork loin steaks sliced
  • 250 grams chestnut mushrooms sliced
  • 1 leaves sprig thyme picked
  • 1 Knorr onion gravy pot
  • 1 tablespoon creme fraiche

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 180C. Add a thin layer of oil to a casserole dish and pop in the oven to heat up.
  • While the oil heats, whisk the eggs and flour together then add enough milk to make a gloopy batter. Season with a little salt and pepper.
  • When the oil is smoking hot, add the onion slices and then the batter on top, then return to the oven for 20 - 25 mins until the pudding is puffed and browned.
  • While the Yorkshire bakes, fry the pork, mushrooms and thyme together over a medium heat until the pork is cooked through and the mushrooms tender.
  • As the pork finishes, make up the onion gravy as per the packet instructions and then whisk in the creme fraiche. Serve a slice of the Yorkshire pudding with the pork and mushroom mixture, with a helping of the creamed onion gravy.
Categories
batter food ice cream

grilled waffles

A couple of years back Jamie Oliver made waffles without using a waffle maker. He used, rather brilliantly I thought, a griddle pan. Genius!

Searching around for the recipe, it’s fair to say there’s some grumpy people out there that have tried it. Esther of the always-readable Recipe Rifle was particularly scathing about them, Kooky Girl has issues, and the ingredients list morphs from one post to another. It appears there was a discrepancy when recording where Jamie might’ve said “tablespoons” instead of “teaspoons”… it’s a bit of a mess. I’m no stickler for an exact recipe, but this is one of those things where you need the right balance of crispy, fluffy and rising to make it work.

Thankfully I found a great new blog as a result of this bout of surfing, Always Order Dessert. Alejandra Ramos struggled to find a consistent recipe too, so engaged the brain to invent one. Using this and a handful of other blogs I came up with a recipe I was perfectly pleased with.

Mindful of problems people were having with flipping the waffle, I had the brainwave to Foreman it. Propped up by newspaper so the grill stayed level, I cooked the batter on a George Foreman grill. This meant they cooked evenly on both sides, no flipping and they developed golden ridges. Flavour-wise, what we really have is American-style pancake batter cooked to a crisp so it’s not quite waffley but hits all the right points.

I’m entering this in Kavey’s monthly Bloggers Scream for Ice Cream challenge. I’ve entered this challenge last year for sorbet, this month the theme is waffles and cones. If you’re looking for some food inspiration go check out Kavey Eats, there’s tons of great food and reviews over there. The ice cream component of my waffles was ready-made; they’re not high-eatin’ but I really like Ben & Jerry’s Core range. This is Winter Berry Brownie, a really fruit ice cream with great big chunks of brownie.

Grilled waffles (makes about 8):

1 egg

300ml whole milk

1 teaspoon vanilla paste

200g plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

Pinch of salt

1 tablespoon caster sugar

Squirt of lemon juice

100g butter, melted

  1. Whisk together the egg, milk and vanilla. Sift in the flour and baking powder and whisk until really smooth. Stir in the salt, sugar and lemon juice, and then dribble in the butter whisking all the time. Leave to rest in the fridge for 30 mins.
  2. Preheat your George Foreman grill to high. When hot ladle on the batter and close the grill. Cook for 5 – 7 minutes until golden brown and lever off with a wooden spatula. Serve with ice cream.
Categories
batter fish food shandy

shandy cobbler

Being sent mystery packages in the post is intriguing. When an odd cardboard box arrived in the office, I took one look and then let people have a rummage through it. Cue lots of “ooohs” and “aaahs”. The good people at Ben Shaw’s sent me a box of their retro drinks, with flavours like Dandelion & Burdock, Cloudy Lemonade and Cream Soda. For the record, Dandelion & Burdock tastes just as weird as you remember. The Cream Soda was a massive hit.

Along with the drinks they asked me to incorporate it into a recipe. And so Shandy Cobbler was born. When I told my Dad what I was having for dinner, he thought I was on about some sort of pie, but no, cobbler is a type of river fish. And I used Ben Shaw’s Bitter Shandy in the batter for lifting foam and savoury flavour which works really well with the meaty and slightly bland fish. A neat twist on regular batter.

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shandy cobbler

Course Main Course
Cuisine English
Keyword deep fried, fish
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 8 minutes
Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 tablespoon honey
  • 330 ml Ben Shaw's Bitter Shandy
  • 1 egg beaten
  • 250 g plain flour
  • 2 river cobbler fillets

Instructions

  • Get a deep pan ready to deep fry with oil at 180C.
  • Put a dish aside with 2 tablespoons of the flour.
  • Mix the baking powder, honey, egg and flour. Add enough shandy to make a custardy-batter. Dip the fish in the flour, then in the batter mix.
  • Deep fry the fillets for 6 - 8 minutes (depending on thickness) until the batter is a deep golden brown. Serve immediately with chips and peas, and plenty of malt vinegar.
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