Breakfast Pancakes

"Why on earth don't we eat this more often" is often heard in our house.  The answer usually is quite simple - I'm either following my ADD cooking instinct, flitting from one craving to another, ticking off new ideas, new ingredients, new trends, new recipes, new combinations: finding one, perfecting it, loving it, then moving on to the next like a ruthless serial monogamist.  When I'm not doing that, I fall back on the old favourites, those 10 or so recipes that most people have up their sleeve, with familiar, soothing flavours.

When it comes to breakfast though, I really have no excuses other than laziness.  I am one of those annoying morning people.  My brain is at its most sharpest around dawn, and no doubt declines rapidly over the next few hours.  I am my own boss, so have the luxury of being able to take a little more time rather than joining the morning rush hour. My appetite is even quite keen first thing.  So why on earth do I default to toast 99% of the time?

These little beauties take about the same time as a slice of toast to make, and are a perfect vehicle for getting a portion of fruit in early doors.  The recipe is so easy to remember - loosely based on a Jamie Oliver recipe I saw him do on tv, and it stuck.  The ingredients are so basic that it's a storecupboard staple, and it keeps for a day in the fridge so tomorrow's breakfast will be even quicker.

It's Pancake Tuesday today so this seems like an apt recipe to share.

Breakfast Pancakes

1 cup Self-Raising Flour

1 cup Milk

1 egg

Fruit (optional) - whatever you have in.  Examples that work particularly well are a grated apple or pear, a sliced banana, or a handful of blueberries.

Butter for frying

Mix all the ingredients for the pancakes together.  Melt about a teaspoon of butter in a non-stick pan.  When it foams, put about a ladleful of batter per pancake in the pan.  When small bubbles appear on the top, flip them over and cook for another minute or so, until golden brown on each side.

Today, I grated an apple into the batter, and added a sliced banana to the pan to caramelise while my pancake was cooking.  I served it with a dollop of Greek Yoghurt and a squeeze of honey.

Makes about 8 pancakes.

Nacho Cheese and other jokes

Q: What do you call cheese that isn't yours?
A: Nacho Cheese

Hold on to your hats folks, there are more quality jokes where that one came from.

I am a big fan of most things USA-related.  For while, for some people, USA bashing seems to be a hobby, I was raised by a mother who had spent time working for the US Army, and was a big fan, a trait she has passed down to me.  It isn't a big surprise, then, that I'm a big fan of the celebration of America The Beautiful that is Superbowl Sunday.  The anthems!  The incomprehensible rules!  The adverts!  The half time spectacular!  (I try to kid myself but truly, Beyonce was the biggest draw for me this year.  Please can I be her when I grow up?)  I love the idea of having people over for Superbowl Sunday, to the point where last year I tweeted this:

Feel like I should have people over for Superbowl Sunday and feed them burgers and sliders
— Suzanne Hitchen (@suzienewshoes) February 5, 2012

whereas in reality here, it's shown on a Monday when most people I know with regular jobs are at work.  Neither me nor Andy are burdened with a regular job though, so this year, I decided to go full on Americana with the menu.  Pancakes for breakfast, Nacho Cheese for lunch, Burgers for tea.

I remember the first time I tasted Nacho Cheese.  It took me until my twenties to finally realise that if I had the money, it was perfectly ok to buy cinema food, rather than taking my own pre-prepared snacks.  Sort of like the moment when you realise you could buy a box of After Eights not as a gift and eat them yourself any time you want to.

Nacho Cheese had me hooked from the start.  The salty nachos, the tangy pickled jalapenos, the luminous, wondrous thing that was liquid cheese sauce.  One of those things I always assumed I couldn't recreate at home without recourse to a vat of chemicals and some industrial-strength food colouring.  I was over the moon to read this Food 52 article which described how to make it yourself at home, with the brilliant addition of turmeric for colour.  It was tangy, it was spicy, it was cheesy.  I actually found myself adding more cheese than recommended surprisingly, as I used a mature cheddar as opposed to the milder Monterey Jack that is in the original.  We went full on cheesy overload on this, to the point where we couldn't face the burgers later on.  No matter, we had them the next day and I used the leftover Nacho Cheese sauce as a topping for them.

Oh, and those other cheese jokes:

Q: What cheese would you use to disguise a small horse?
A; Marscapone

Q: What cheese would you use to lure a bear out of the woods?
A: Camembert

Q: What does the cheese say when it looks in the mirror?
A: Halloumi

Right, on with something I'm actually good at: the food.

Nacho Cheese Sauce
From Food52.com

3 tablespoons unsalted butter
Half an onion, finely chopped
2 green chillis, chopped
1 tomato, seeded and finely chopped
0.25 teaspoon ground turmeric
0.25 teaspoon paprika
0.25 teaspoon cayenne pepper

2 tablespoons plain flour
0.25 cup cream
1 cup buttermilk
80g mature, strong cheddar
1 tablespoon olive oil
Salt and pepper

In a frying pan, melt 2 tablespoons of the butter.  Add the onion, chilli, tomato, turmeric, paprika and cayenne.  Cook over a low heat for 10 minutes, until the onion softens.

Add the rest of the butter and flour, cook for another 2 minutes to 'cook out' the flour.  Add the cream, half the buttermilk, and the cheese, and stir until the cheese is melted.   Add the remaining buttermilk gradually until the sauce is smooth, rich and velvety.

Blend until completely smooth.  With the motor running, add the olive oil.  Taste and season as you like.

This can be made a day in advance, kept in a sealed container in the fridge and reheated for a minute or so in the microwave.

Serve with nachos and pickled jalapenos, while watching a game you don't understand in a country on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

Prawns to use up

Ah, the perils of renting.  Just when you think you have found the perfect house - located close to the sea in chilled-out Lyall Bay, three bedrooms, enough space for two hoarders to spread all their stuff around, good size kitchen, no pesky hills to go up and down, garden for barbecue and herbs and off road parking, your landlords decide to sell up and you are back on the househunting trail.  This isn't another whinge about the soul-destroying process of finding a rental in Wellington (although it truly is the stuff of nightmares), but putting a resolution down in writing. This will be our fourth move in 3 years in NZ; we never seem to learn and just accumulate more stuff each time, including food.  I do not want to move the contents of our freezer, succinctly described by Andy as "bones and juice", so I am on a mission to use up as much as possible before the day is here.

Having exhausted, for now, the possibilities of leftover slow-cooker pork (I sell it on my market stall every week; leftovers get bagged up for our own use), I spied a bag of prawns lurking in there.  My last experiment with prawns was a take on Delia's Prawns with Chilli and Cheese that my dear heart described as "interesting" - yes, that is a euphemism - so I suggested spicy prawn noodles this time.  However, doing some more tidying and packing, I came across a years-old supplement from Sainsbury's magazine, from back in the UK.  Spying an opportunity for procrastination, I was flicking through it when I spotted a recipe for Prawn and Potato Chermoula.  Not a traditional Chermoula, a spicy Moroccan sauce with a thick, pesto-like texture, this was closer to a soup.  I had most of the ingredients except tomatoes of any kind (how on earth did that happen? Kitchen Fail), so I improvised with tomato puree - this was fine, but proper tomatoes would have been better.  Likewise I had used up the last of my fresh ginger, so used 1/4 teaspoon ground.  I had a lonely half a bulb of fennel lurking in the fridge too, so threw that in.

It was absolutely delicious.  Spicy, easy, quick, the perfect weeknight tea.  Both of us wolfed it down, and I wouldn't hesitate to make it again.  It was substantial enough to be filling but not overwhelmingly so on a hot summer night.  Possibly the only addition I would make next time would be a green vegetable; spinach might be a good one to stir through, accompanied by a good spritz of lemon to freshen it up.

In a poignant footnote, the recipe in the supplement comes from the prolific and influential Katie Stewart, who died on January 13.  RIP Katie, I hope this recipe honours your memory.

Oh, and if anyone knows a fabulous, warm, 3 bedroom place by the sea renting for $200 a week, give me a shout.

Prawn and Potato Chermoula
From Fabulous Fish, Sainsburys Magazine, by Katie Stewart

200g peeled and cooked prawns
350g waxy potatoes, scrubbed and sliced
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2.5cm fresh ginger, grated, or 0.25 teaspoon ground ginger
1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
1 bunch spring onions, finely sliced
0.5 fennel bulb, finely chopped
1 tablespoon smoked paprika
1 tablespoon tomato puree, or 4 ripe tomatoes, chopped, or 1 can tomatoes, chopped
1 tablespoon light brown sugar
150ml chicken stock
Handful parsley, chopped
Small bunch chives, chopped
Salt and pepper

Heat the oil in a large pan.  Add the garlic, ginger, chilli, onions and fennel and cook over a low heat for one minute, then stir in the paprika.  Add the sliced potato, stirring them to absorb the flavours.

Add the tomatoes, sugar, stock and a good seasoning of salt and pepper.  Cover with the lid and simmer gently for 15 minutes, until the potatoes are tender.  Stir in the prawns and herbs and cook, uncovered, for a couple of minutes to heat the prawns.  Serve immediately.

Serves 2

Bolognese, my way

I'm not exactly sure why but whenever I've been away from my kitchen for a while, bolognese is the meal I start craving to make.  There's a distinct difference between meals I yearn to eat and meals I yearn to cook, and with bolognese possibly more than any other it's about the rituals.  Possibly because it is the antithesis of cooking on the road; there, by necessity, food is fast - either cooked on a barbecue, campsite kitchen, or on the hob in the van.  Also, bolognese is one of the meals of my childhood - born in 1976, growing up in north-west England the Mediterranean diet hadn't quite swept through our industrial town, but my Mum fully embraced this dish.  She is a wonderful cook, truly my first teacher, but the bolognese I make today is a different entity to the one we used to eat.  

I also like to think this played its part in Andy's and my burgeoning relationship, back when it was still in its infancy - it formed part of the first meal I cooked for Andy in a kitchen of our own, in our lovely flat with parquet floors in Bario Norte, Buenos Aries.

And listen, I know, I know, there are a million and one recipes for bolognese out there.  Everyone I know makes it slightly differently.  Every Italian Mama makes it differently.  This is how I make it, and this works for me -   I just wanted to send it out there.  This is my culinary home, and home can be beautiful place to be.

Bolognese Sauce

The one thing that you can't skimp on with this recipe is time.  It's the perfect recipe for a rainy day, when you have lots of pottering to do.  I also think it's a great recipe for sneaking veggies into vegetable-averse people - the vegetables are about equal to the volume of meat.  And about that meat - I vary between doing 50/50 beef mince to pork mince, and just beef mince.  This time round, beef mince was what I had in the freezer, so beef mince it was.  Final point - I rely quite heavily on my food processor for this, but I'm sure there is nothing that couldn't be done with a knife and a bit more time.

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion
1 carrot, peeled
1 stick celery
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
4 rashers streaky bacon
200g mushrooms
500g best quality beef mince (see note above)
1 glass red wine
1 glass full fat milk
1 can tomatoes
1 tablespoon tomato puree
Beef stock cube
2 bay leaves
2 teaspoons dried oregano
2 teaspoons dried thyme
Pinch of sugar

In a food processor, blitz the onion, carrot and celery until they are in small pieces (think the size of mince).  Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy-based pan over a medium heat, and fry the blitzed vegetables in this. This will take some time until they fully soften; be patient.

Blitz the bacon, then the mushrooms.

Add the garlic to the pan, cook for a few minutes.  Add the bacon and cook until its colour changes and it starts to release its fat.  Add the mushrooms (it will look like loads).  Cook for another 5 minutes or so, until the mushrooms are cooked and some of the water has evaporated from them.

Add the mince and cook until browned.

Add the glass of red wine - stir until most has been absorbed by the other ingredients.
Add the milk and do the same. Do not be freaked out by how horrible it looks right now - the milk acts as a tenderiser for the mince and results in a velvety texture.  I promise, you will not taste it at the end.

Chop the tomatoes in the can (or, if you are impatient like me, get the kitchen scissors in there and chop them that way) and add to the pan along with the tablespoon of tomato puree.

Put the beef stock cube in the tomato can and fill it to the top with hot water.  Add this to the pan.

Add the herbs, sugar, salt and pepper to taste.

Bring to the boil, then reduce to a low simmer - it should bubble and gloop at you occasionally, but nowhere near a rolling boil.  Then LEAVE IT.

Seriously, it needs about 4 hours to become a beautiful bol.

Taste it every so often - it might need upping on the herbs and the s&p.

After about 4 hours it will miraculously come together into the beautiful sauce that we all know and love.

Eat with the pasta of your choice - I'm too much of a realist to be a pasta nazi - I prefer spaghetti whereas Andy prefers penne, but any port in a storm.  It serves, what, about 8? Maybe more, maybe less, all depends.  It freezes beautifully, if you can stop eating it straight from the pan long enough to portion it up.

Roadtrip with added Spicy Mussels

When we first moved to New Zealand, high on our to do list was to buy a Campervan. When we first met, in Australia in 2006, we took a trip in a Camper up the East Coast. Three years later, en route to NZ, we repeated the same trip in reverse. We are head-over-heels in love with the Campervanning lifestyle - it's as close to camping as I can be comfortable with.  And so a couple of years ago, we welcomed the newest member of our little family. Nicknamed Wilson for reasons long forgotten, he's a 1991 Toyota Hiace and has given us sterling service. Sadly, a subsequent move close to the sea has meant a significant rust problem, and he ain't getting any younger, so we are determined to make the most of owning the van while he's still ours. Last year we did a big trip round the South Island but this year, having just done three winters back-to-back, we were sun-starved and longing for the subtropical North.

And wowzers, we had such a lovely time.  11 days of sunny, warm bliss, a thousand miles figuratively away from the city and its stresses. It's been an ambition of mine for some time to make it right up to the very top, to Cape Reinga, so that's what we did. We nearly got blown away - and we thought Wellington was windy!

We ate really, spectacularly well in our 11 days away, including some notable meals out.  At Mangonui Fish Shop we ate Fish and Chips with the most perfectly designed view. If Carlsberg did Fish and Chip Shops...

Another biggie for me was getting to Leigh. The name of my hometown in England is Leigh and, well, let's just say that the differences between NZ warm, seaside, charming Leigh and English northern, industrial Leigh are considerable. Leigh is famous for its Sawmill, which in turn is famous for music and food. I ate more fish there - it seems to be my default option whenever I'm by the sea. The only let down with this meal were the crushed potatoes, which were quite dry. Nevertheless it's a great place to eat if you're in Leigh (never thought I'd type that sentence).

By a long shot though, the best food that we ate was the food we cooked ourselves. I often think that, and by no means are either of us the best cooks in the world (no, honestly!). Just cooking what you feel like, when you feel like it, using fresh ingredients, and eaten in the open air next to your beloved Campervan with a glass of wine - well, there are no words. So I won't even attempt it.  Who knows how long we will have our van for? I certainly don't, possibly only the mechanic and the bank manager know for sure. But whatever the future holds, I will be able to recreate these meals again, and pretend we're right back there, in the sun.

This was my favourite dish, cooked by Andy.

Mussels in tomato and chilli sauce

From The Great Bloke's BBQ Cookbook, Kim Terakes

Use your own palate and preferences to dictate the amount of chilli you use. The original recipe calls for the sauce to be blended until smooth, but a blender isn't a tool we carry with us, so he left it chunky. I wouldn't change this next time I make it.

1 clove garlic, chopped

1 onion, sliced

1.5 tablespoons olive oil

2 ripe tomatoes, chopped

2 chillies, chopped

1kg Greenlip mussels, cleaned and any open shells discarded

6 basil leaves, finely sliced

6 parsley leaves, finely sliced

Black pepper

In a large pan with a lid, heat the oil over a high heat and fry the garlic and onion until soft. Add the tomatoes and chillies, reduce the heat to medium and cook for about 10 minutes, until the tomatoes are mushy. 

Turn the heat back up to high, and add the mussels, putting the lid on immediately.  Cook for 3 minutes, shaking the pot from time to time.  Check that the mussels have opened - cook for a minute or so longer if most haven't. Add the fresh herbs, black pepper, and serve immediately with crusty bread.

Serves two blissed out campers.

Lentils for the New Year

I love the tradition of eating lentils at the New Year. It ticks so many boxes - it is supposed to be lucky, representing wealth if you take the view that they look like little coins. They are a good vehicle for using up the last of the tenacious Christmas leftovers. They are fantastically healthy, if the predictable January health kick starts as early as the 1st. And they are as cheap as - well, lentils, so helping with the also-predictable austerity measures.

I am somewhat enamoured right now with the website Eat Your Books which acts as a virtual bookshelf. I'm always too scared to count my cookbooks, but know that it is definitely in the three figures arena. Actually, since this year I started my own business working with food, I can tell myself "It's for work, it's for work" (repeat ad infinitum). But the truth is, most of these were bought for me. And, for shame, I am past the tipping point at which I have too many to make searching through them for a specific recipe time-savvy; more often than not I turn to Google. But this website acts as a google for your own books. How incredibly cool is that?

I will be testing it out later this month to find a recipe for the Bake Club that I also started this year, but 1st January, I was all about the lentils. So I typed in, incredibly, 'lentils' (shocker!) and it brought up literally hundreds of recipes that were sitting there on my shelf floor. Most of them, unsurprisingly, were much of a muchness, and no doubt I could have come up with something similar myself, but I'm a sucker for a system that works.  I ended up using a Jamie Oliver recipe that makes big claims in the title ("The most incredible lentils") - don't know if I would go that far but they were just right. Soothing, homely flavours. We had these with sausages (leftover from Christmas Day Pigs in Blankets) and Dauphinoise Potatoes (leftover from Christmas and subsequently frozen), with a couple of florets of broccoli for health. Andy doesn't like lentils as a general rule, but I made him eat a couple for luck.  And since he has been my most constant support through the very up-and-down 2012, I thought it was the least I could do for him. I'm sure he'll thank me one day.

The Most Incredible Lentils
From Jamie Oliver, jamie does...

1 carrot, peeled and finely chopped
1 stick of celery, peeled and finely chopped
1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 tablespoon duck fat (I'd normally sub olive oil but I have some leftover from the Christmas Roasties)
250g Puy lentils
0.5 litre turkey stock (any good veggie/chicken stock would do though)
1 potato, peeled and chopped
Extra virgin olive oil
Red wine vinegar
Bouquet garni: small bunch thyme, small bunch parsley, 1 bay leaf, tied up in string

In a heavy pan or casserole, heat the duck fat and then add the carrot, celery and onions.  Cook on a medium heat for about 10 minutes until softened but not dark, and when they really start to smell amazing, throw in the bouquet garni and lentils. Give everything a good stir to get the lentils covered in the juices, then add the turkey stock and potato.

Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer for about 45 minutes until everything is soft. Crush the potatoes and stir them back through the sauce - this helps make the sauce really robust and quite creamy. Remove the bouquet garni, and check the seasoning. Add a splash of both extra virgin olive oil and red wine vinegar, and check the seasoning again.

Eat, while dreaming of the wealth that is sure to head your way during 2013.

Serves 4

Chicken and Sweetcorn Meatballs

I was somewhat late to the Ottolenghi table.  I'm not even sure why; I mean, just look how delicious all these sound.  His flavour combinations are right up my street, and I love the sound of his spices.  I hang my head in shame as to how long it took me to get round to making my first recipe.

But, I never can resist a good meatball, so when I read about these little beauties, I had to give them a go.  Even more pressing, I first made them in the run-up to the Rugby World Cup last year, when we would be hosting two very special visitors from home, Andy's Dad, Selwyn, and his good friend and partner-in-crime, Roy.  When I'm cooking for just the two of us most of the time, and for a good chunk of the week just for me if Andy's working in the evening, I can take more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants approach; when we had visitors staying with us for close to a month, I needed to get somewhat more organised, and so fell happily on anything I could prepare in the calm before the storm, freeze, and serenely present it to our guests, beatific smile on my face, and act as if I was quite the domestic goddess.  Between you, me and the gatepost, no description could be further from the truth - fine, my baking is ok, but my dusting skills fall sadly short of the mark - so anything to make my life easier is A Good Thing.

These were so lovely I made them again recently.  They are light enough to suit the late summer season (or early autumn, as we are in now - I blame St David, as 1st March is the first day of autumn here).  And, true to expectations, it was the spice element that really makes them zing.  The cumin is a beautiful element of the flavour, and the sweet/sour sauce, from the perfect merging of these ingredients, is good enough to drink by itself, from the bowl.  Although obviously I didn't do that.  OBVIOUSLY. 

A few adaptations from the original - turkey mince is surprisingly hard to find here, so I made the obvious sub of chicken mince, and actually made my own from free-range boneless thighs, I used wholemeal bread instead of the original's white bread, and for the sauce, I used one of those handy jars of marinated, roasted red peppers, instead of roasting my own.  I know, I know, but I already had one in and it seemed the easier route, plus I couldn't tell any difference from the previous time when I did DIY the peppers.

Chicken and Sweetcorn Meatballs with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce
Adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi

For the Meatballs:
100g frozen sweetcorn kernels
3 slices of wholemeal bread, crusts removed
500g boneless chicken thighs, minced
1 free-range egg
4 spring onions, finely chopped
2 tbsp finely chopped parsley
2.5 tsp ground cumin
1.5 tsp salt
0.5 tsp black pepper
1 garlic clove, crushed
Olive oil, for frying

For the Roasted Red Pepper Sauce:
4 roasted red peppers, from a jar
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp salt
25g coriander, leaves and stalks
1 garlic clove, peeled
1 small mild chilli, deseeded
2 tbsp sweet chilli sauce
2 tbsp cider vinegar or white wine vinegar

Preheat your oven to 200C.

Put all the ingredients for the sauce in a blender or a food processor, and blitz until smooth.  Taste for seasoning, adjust if necessary, and set aside.

Heat a non-stick frying pan over a medium to high heat, and toast the sweetcorn kernels, tossing occasionally (I love this as I get the chance to practice my cheffy pan-flicky thing, resulting in sweetcorn all over the hob and the floor) until they are well-toasted, and starting to char in some places.  Leave to cool.

Soak the bread in water, squeeze it well to remove the excess liquid, and crumble into a large mixing bowl.  Add all the other meatball ingredients except the oil, and mix well.  Form into meatballs about the size of golf balls.

Heat the oil in your frying pan over a medium to high heat, and, in batches, fry the meatballs until they are brown on all sides.  Transfer to a baking sheet, and cook in your preheated oven - mine took about 10 minutes, it's best to check with one that it's cooked through because of the variables in this - the size of your meatballs, how much you brown them, etc.  Anyway, they don't take long.

Serve with your red pepper sauce on the side.  I like mine with a simply-dressed green salad.

Serves 4