Pancakes! Baked with onions, mushrooms, cheese, parsley and garlic

Pancakes baked with onions, mushrooms, cheese, parsley and garlic

Happy Pancake Day!

Pancakes are pure genius.  Want something sweet?  Have a pancake.  Want something savoury and stodgy and comfort foody?  Have a pancake.  Want something savoury and posh and delicate?  Have a pancake.  Want something spicy?  Have an Indian pancake.  Is there anywhere in the world that hasn't developed its own type of pancake?

Anyway.  My lovely husband loves pancakes like all sane human beings but has plans for the evening so we decided to have pancakes the night before.  Which is perfect because it means that I can write and schedule a post to go up on Pancake Day itself which is pretty cunning.

I used Nigel Slater's recipe for the pancakes themselves and stuffed them with a somewhat random mixture of things that I had in the kitchen:  fried four chopped onions, added some mushrooms and garlic, seasoned with salt and pepper and added in some grated cheddar and chopped parsley at the end, after taking it off the heat.

onion, garlic, mushroom, parsley and cheddar pancake filling

Then, made the pancakes.  I love doing things like this on the hob - watching the butter foam, having to speedily swirl the mixture, having to flip them over.  It's all great fun!

Pancake

Pancake

As each pancake was done, I put in the batter for the next and while that was cooking, I'd fill the cooked pancake with the mixture and put in a baking dish.  I went for folding the pancakes into quarters.  Mostly because that fit well into the baking dish I had - you could do it in any number of ways.

the first of many

starting to fill up!

Nigel Slater suggested adding a knob of butter to each pancake before it went in the oven but that seemed a touch unhealthy after all the butter that went into the pan to grease the pancakes so I just went for topping with grated parmesan.  Because obviously that is totally healthy.  Baked at 200 degrees C for about 10 minutes to heat through again and melt the parmesan on top.  Nigel Slater suggests baking filled savoury pancakes for 30 minutes but that would have been waaaay too long for these, they were perfectly done after 10.

Mmmmm.  These were lovely.  I love pancakes.  Not just for Pancake Day but nevertheless Pancake Day is an excellent excuse for a few!

Pancakes baked with onions, mushrooms, cheese, parsley and garlic

Pancakes baked with onions, mushrooms, cheese, parsley and garlic

Roasted garlic and creme fraiche spaghetti

Roasted garlic and creme fraiche spaghetti

I've been working late a lot recently and so my lovely husband has been taking on more of the cooking.  The other day he made a particularly lovely pasta dish involving roasted garlic, creme fraiche, mushrooms, mangetout and spaghetti.  Mmmm.

To make it, he first of all roasted the garlic, which takes around an hour so worth bearing that in mind if you're really hungry!

Roasted garlic and creme fraiche spaghetti

There are a number of ways to roast garlic but he went for the method described here (the bottom of the page, "roasting garlic for cooking purposes") which seemed to produce some pretty tasty roasted garlic. 

Then, he fried up the vegetables - an onion, a selection of mushrooms and some mangetout (though, really, any vegetables would work) - added a good slug of white wine, cooked for a while longer to let that reduce, stirred in the creme fraiche, left it to heat through, then added the roasted garlic and the spaghetti. 

 

Roasted garlic and creme fraiche spaghetti

We decided to pack up the left overs for lunches during the week but, if you wanted to, I bet it would make for a lovely frittata di spaghetti.  That's the Italian way of using up left over spaghetti which - like much Italian cooking - is straightforward but very very good.  All you do is grease a pan (olive oil/butter/as you wish), put the spaghetti in it, crack a couple of eggs in (more if you have loads of left over spaghetti, obviously) and then cook.  Particularly good with a little cheese on top. 

Party food - puff pastry tarts, mushroom & stilton, tomato, garlic & olive, tomato & mozzarella

Mushroom and stilton puff pastry tarts

Tomato and mozzarella puff pastry tart

One of the things that I find difficult about hosting parties is providing enough food to cater for different preferences - e.g. people who don't like cheese or tomatoes or whatever - while not cooking so many different things that results in kitchen chaos.

At the party we hosted recently, I went for making mini puff pasty tarts with different toppings.  Very easy, can be made small enough that they are finger food, and allow you to have a variety of toppings to appeal to all.

Mushroom and stilton puff pastry tart

Mushroom and stilton puffy pastry tarts

What you do is:  buy some puff pastry, cut into squares of about 2 1/2 inches square, put on topping, bake for 10-15 mins at 200 degrees C.  It's worth leaving some space around the edges to avoid spillage but you don't need to leave more than about a 1/4 of an inch.  To avoid having to faff in the kitchen too much with guests around, we baked these the morning of the party and served at room temperature but they would be good hot/warm too.

The toppings I went for were:

Mushroom and stilton:  which I made by frying mushrooms in butter and sherry, then melting in some stilton.  These were probably the ones that got eaten fastest at the party.

Mushroom and stilton puff pastry tarts

Tomato and mozzarella:  thin slice of tomato on each with a slice of mozzarella on top.  These looked like mini pizzas.

Tomato and mozzarella puff pastry tarts

 Tomato, olive and garlic:  slice of tomato, olives and chopped garlic.  Mmmm, garlic!

Tomato, olive and garlic puff pastry tart

Tomato, olive and garlic puff pastry tarts

Mushroom stroganoff

Stroganoff and rice

I make absolutely no claims for the authenticity of this dish, I only have the haziest of ideas of what the defining characteristics of stroganoff actually are but it is quick and tasty and involves mushrooms and mustard. That's generally good enough for me.

Chopped onion and mushrooms

Mmm, mushrooms

Mushrooms cooking

Fry 500g of mushrooms and an onion in olive oil (or butter) for around 10-15 minutes, add a dash of sherry, 300ml of crème fraiche, mustard to taste (I go for about three teaspoons of seedy mustard but I love my mustard!), salt, pepper and paprika. Fresh chopped parsley on top is good if you have it. Serve with rice.

Almost ready stroganoff

Mushrooms stuffed with stilton and garlicky breadcrumbs

Mushrooms ready for stuffing

For some reason, this past month has been the month of the mushroom in our house. I seem to have cooked a lot of mushroom dishes. For instance, recently, I tried to recreate the mushrooms stuffed with stilton that we had atThe Vaults a little while ago.

I took 14 small mushrooms, took out the stalks and put them into a buttered oven dish. Then scattered 250g of stilton, the sliced mushroom stalks (waste not, want not!), 300g of crème fraiche on top, in that order.

With added stilton

Mmmm, stilton

With mushroom stalks added on top

With creme fraiche added on top

Musing on what I thought was missing from The Vaults' version, I realised that it was the obvious: garlic! So, I crushed in three cloves of garlic into two slices of bread's worth of breadcrumbs along with olive oil, salt and black pepper. 

The missing ingredient!

Breadcrumbs tossed in olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic

Having sprinkled the mushrooms with the breadcrumbs, I then baked at 180 degrees for 25 minutes. 

The finished product

Verdict: tasty but some of the mushrooms were a little undercooked. I think, next time, I'd be tempted to roast them on their own for 10 minutes or so before adding the crème fraiche and breadcrumbs and baking for a further 25 mins or so. I think, also, it would have helped to have melted the stilton into the crème fraiche as then that element would have been hot before it went into the oven.

One to experiment with more another time.

Restaurant review - The Vaults, Cambridge

Much though I love my home town, Cambridge, it has never seemed to have as many good restaurants as it should do.  Or perhaps during my formative years, I just never had the money to eat at them.  Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised recently to have a lovely dinner at The Vaults.

We had the dinner menu which suggests that you have 2-3 dishes each and share.  I had the twice cooked eggs and half of the goats cheese toast and the mushrooms with stilton.  The mushrooms with stilton were delicious - I spent half my time thinking "mmmmm" and half thinking "I must figure out how to replicate this at home" (I have an idea of how to - will post when I try out my idea).  The goats cheese was pretty tasty, though came in rather small portions.  The twice cooked eggs were a good idea but rather underseasoned - I'm not sure they were salted at all and, in my view, eggs really need at least a little salt - so a bit disappointing.  Though, really, I enjoyed the mushrooms so much that I wasn't that disappointed.

In general, the only real quibble I had with the food was that the portion sizes seemed a little arbitrary - the meat dishes that my husband ordered came in much larger portions than the vegetarian dishes.  Fortunately for marital harmony, the mushrooms came in a reasonable portion size so we weren't reduced to the indignity of squabbling over the last bit of stiltony sauce.

I rather wanted some gelato to finish (as previously mentioned, I love gelato) but, sadly, they'd run out of every single flavour.  I attempted instead to order some pomegranate dessert wine but they'd also run out of that.  So, poor me, I ended up with a rather lovely espresso martini to round off the meal.

Despite having had five dishes and bread to share, a glass of wine each, a pudding for my husband and an espresso martini for me, the bill came to around £60 which I thought was damn good value.

Overall:  definitely the nicest meal out I've had in Cambridge.  I will return. 

Pie

I have a friend who has been telling me for years that it's not that hard to make your own pastry but, somehow, I never really believed her. It always seemed like something that only 50s housewives would do. But, actually, it is quite easy. Also, I have extremely cold hands and this is about the only thing that I have ever found that helpful for so I sort of think that it's something I should therefore do.

Grated butter and flour

Grated butter and flour

Grated butter and flour

Grated butter and flour

I found a basic recipe for pastry somewhere and have been using it ever since:  275g plain flour, 225g butter, pinch of salt.  You put the butter in the freezer for about half an hour before you want to start.  Then you put the flour in a bowl, grate the butter into it (quickly, well, that's what the original recipe said, because I have ultra cold hands, the butter really doesn't melt on them and I can kind of take my time!), then gently mix the butter into the flour and gradually add cold water until it becomes dough-like.

You can wrap it by alternating strips

Or you can wrap it up like a parcel

All wrapped up like a parcel

Wrap in clingfilm and put in the fridge for about half an hour.  Then roll it out till it's about 3 or 4 mm thick, put some filling in it, wrap it up, put it in the oven at around 200 degrees for about 30 minutes.  If you glaze it by brushing beaten egg over it, it looks prettier.

Ready made pastry is still a glorious invention and I won't stop buying it for the times when I just can't be bothered to make my own but it does genuinely taste better when you make it yourself and it's actually not that time consuming to make.  I'd say it's only about 20 minutes worth of actual effort (and some freezer and fridge time.)

I have tried out a few fillings.  Last time I made pies, I made two, one spinach, broad bean and feta using the filling from this Nigel Slater recipe.  And mushroom, chestnut and stilton pie from my own invention.  I just kind of made it up but, roughly, what I did was:  slice up some mushrooms quite thickly, fry them up with some sliced garlic, add some chopped chestnuts, fry it for a bit longer, then add some salt, black pepper, parsley and stilton at the end.  Pretty damn good.

Spinach, broad bean and feta filling

Spinach, broad bean and feta filling

Mushroom, chestnut and stilton filling