Bacon, blueberry, Cheshire cheese & maple syrup American style blueberry pancakes

Yes, it's a bit of a mouthful of a name, but I couldn't bear to leave anything out.  Our favourite pancakes for today's pancake day and hubby even requested them for his birthday last year, which demonstrates how good they are!  The pancakes themselves are really light and fluffy and as the melted butter is included in the batter mix, this means you can use the lightest smear of oil (or even a low calorie oil spray, which I used) in the pan to cook them - and the butter makes them taste fab.

Hubby's birthday pancakes!

With harmonious flavours throughout, the white, crumbly Cheshire cheese lends that slightly sour, tangy but also creamy note that works so well with both the bacon and the blueberries and of course, maple syrup goes with everything.

So why spend time debating whether to serve savoury or sweet pancakes? Serve these babies and you've combined main course and dessert in one fell swoop. Plus, your family will thank you - and no messy clearing up from lemon & sugar or jam!

My Cook's Tips are as follows :

Make sure to put your bacon in the oven before you start cooking the pancakes, so that it is rendered lovely and crispy in time to be broken up over the finished pancakes. You don't want to be waiting, with pancakes ready, for the bacon to finish cooking.

Also, make sure to crumble up the cheese before you start cooking the pancakes. It's so much quicker to just grab a handful of cheesy bits and sprinkle, rather than taking time with crumbling. More to the point, your pancakes will stay hotter and fluffier!

The recipe is incredibly simple and will make six pancakes of approximately six inches each. I use a pan that is the perfect size for each pancake. It takes slightly longer doing them one at a time, but it's easier to measure out the batter and ensures one isn't burning while your attention is on another. Right then, to the recipe!

BACON, BLUEBERRY, CHESHIRE CHEESE & MAPLE SYRUP AMERICAN STYLE BLUEBERRY PANCAKES (Serves 3 : makes 6 individual pancakes)

Ingredients :

250g streaky bacon
200g Cheshire cheese (or any white crumbly cheese)
300g self-raising flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt
2 small eggs (discard half the white of the second egg if using medium or large eggs)
450ml milk
10-15g melted butter
200g blueberries
light vegetable oil or a low calorie cooking spray
maple syrup to taste.

Method :

Begin by lining the inside of a large baking tray and the outside (or reverse) of a slightly smaller baking tray, with silver foil. Lay each rasher of streaky bacon onto the large baking tray until the tray is covered or the bacon runs out! Place the foil covered side of the smaller baking tray on top, to sandwich the bacon between the trays. Place into a 180degF/350degC/Gas 4 oven for 20-25 minutes.

Crumble the cheese into a bowl, making sure to have both larger chunks and smaller pieces.

Next, for the pancakes, place the flour, baking powder and salt into a large bowl and stir together.

In another bowl, add the egg(s) to the milk and beat until combined.

Melt the butter in the pancake pan.

Make a well in the flour mixture and pour in half the egg/milk mixture. Stir with a hand whisk until combined, then add the remains of the egg/milk mixture. Again, stir in until combined and the batter is lump free.

Add the melted butter to the pancake batter and whisk it in until well combined.

Stir in 150g of the blueberries.

Heat the pancake pan (which should still be buttery) over a moderate heat and add a ladleful of the pancake batter, making sure to catch a good helping of the blueberries.

Wait - without poking, stirring or otherwise bothering your pancake - until bubbles have formed on the surface and you can see the edges have pulled away from the pan slightly. Insert a fish slice under the pancake and quickly flip it over. The pancake will rise as it cooks and you can slip the slice underneath and lift it slightly to check the colour. Make sure that the pan doesn't become too hot - you may need to turn it down slightly from time to time - or the pancake will colour on the outside but still be wet on the inside.

Each pancake will only take a couple of minutes on each side, depending on how hot the pan is.

Place each pancake onto a warmed plate and cover with a sheet of kitchen paper, adding the next one on top and repeat until all the pancake batter is used up.

When all the pancakes are cooked, serve two to each plate and sprinkle with Cheshire cheese, then bacon pieces, then extra blueberries from the remaining 50g.

For the final flourish, tip a good swishing of maple syrup over the lot and get stuck in!

Printable version

Feeding eggs to egg-phobics : Mediterranean Frittata

I love eggs.  There's no two ways about it.  I can't think of any incarnation of eggyness that I would turn down - and I've always said to Son & heir that you won't go hungry all the time there's an egg in the house.

Hubby, however, is a different story.  He has a valid reason (two, in fact) for his reticence towards embracing the loveliness that is all things egg.  When he was just a little chap, he suffered a collapsed lung following on from eating an egg.  Now he admits that it may not have been the egg that did it, but as there was nothing else to blame at the time, the egg copped it.  He also has a big texture issue.  He can cope with runny egg yolk, but that's it.  No solidity to the egg yolk and certainly not the white of the egg.  These two things bring a quite marked reaction in his ability to keep the food down.  If you understand what I'm not saying, here.

However, he will happily chomp his way through an Impossible Quiche, or any pastry-based Quiche and will even contemplate an omelette on occasion.  Eggs in baking are okay too, as they just become a part of a whole and are indistinguishable in their form.  The same goes for meringue, however that's pretty much off the menu list owing to the sugar content.  Eggs in custard are fine - but not a custard tart, as that switches on the texture alert.

Now I like to include eggs in our diet on a regular basis as they are so good for you.  Low in fat, high in protein, they're the perfect little package.  So, when I saw the recipe for this Mediterranean Frittata on www.food4two.wordpress.com and realised that it didn't contain any potato (which hubby has had more than enough of in his life, already), I was very keen to make it.  Needless to say, I love any kind of frittata and am famous for making one which contained defrosted oven chips as its potato component.  It works, if you're brave enough to try!

This little frittata is really lovely.  We all felt that it lacked a little in substance (which is where the potato comes in) and when I make it again (which I will) I'll include some sweet potato, or maybe butternut squash, together with mushrooms - which would be just fabulous with it.

I opted for Basil as my herb of choice, which naturally went very well with the courgette and sun dried tomato.  One note on the courgette - instead of slicing it into rounds, I cut it into ribbons with a potato peeler.  This was largely to camouflage it from Son & heir, who has declared a hatred of the poor old courgette.  It worked, as he never noticed it and ventured the opinion that he liked it but for the sun dried tomatoes.  Well, I'm quite prepared to admit that one can never win when trying to feed an almost-teenager.

Where the cheese was concerned, again owing to Son & heir's long list of dislikes I steered clear of Feta.  Instead, I used a creamy and crumbly Cheshire cheese which has an almost lemony flavour and which went just beautifully with the remainder of the ingredients.  When I mentioned the cheese to Son & heir he commented "there was cheese on it?" which I consider to be a positive, even though he didn't notice how lovely it was.

Yet another deviation from the original recipe was that instead of using green beans, I pressganged some leftover Tenderstem Broccoli into use.  I honestly think that you can't go wrong with Tenderstem.  Just cut it to the size that would be manageable in the recipe it's intended to work with and it does its job beautifully.  Incidentally, asparagus would do a similar and just as tasty, job.  I cut each piece of tenderstem into three - two pieces of stalk and one fluffy piece is far easier to handle than trying to manhandle a long piece of broccoli into the pan!

So the recipe I'm including here is my version of the original, which you will find if you click on the link to Food4two above.  However, I'm quite sure that like a lot of these frittata recipes, anything along the veggie line that you would like to include would go just as nicely.  The only thing you need to watch is that a) you don't make the mix too wet by putting something pulpy in it and b) that whatever you're including, goes well with its fellows.

MEDITTERANEAN FRITTATA (serves 4)

Ingredients :

1 courgette, cut into ribbons
1 tbsp olive oil
a handful of Tenderstem broccoli, cut into 3 pieces
5 eggs (I used lovely Burford Brown eggs, just to make it a bit more special)
a handful of sliced basil
freshly ground black pepper
six or so halves of sun-dried tomato, chopped
75-100g of Cheshire cheese, crumbled.

Method :

1.  In a deep frying pan, heat the olive oil and add the courgette slices.  Fry gently until the courgette is tender.

2.  At the same time, heat a saucepan of salted water to boiling and blanche the Tenderstem pieces for 3 minutes, then drain and reserve.


3.  In a bowl, whisk the eggs with the basil and pepper.  You can add a teensy pinch of salt, depending on how salty your cheese is.  I opted not to do this, as the Cheshire cheese was quite salty enough.


4.  Once the courgette is cooked, add the tenderstem pieces and the sun-dried tomatoes to the pan and pour over the egg.


5.  Once you're happy that the vegetables are evenly spaced, add the cheese in crumbles over the top.  You can push the bigger pieces down into the egg to secure them a little if you wish.


6.  Cook on a medium heat for a few minutes - or until the bottom and sides have set.  Then slide the pan under a hot grill for another 2-3 minutes until risen, golden and cooked through.  There should be no wet egg visible if you press down in the middle of the frittata.


7.  Serve warm with salad and crispy croutons.
  
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