Eatin' Banana Pancakes...

There is nothing in the world that excites me more than the reduced section at Clapham South Tescos. Not a flash sale in the bric-a-brac section of the Oxfam charity shop, not a free giveaway of crunchy peanut butter outside the station or even the prospect of being fed peanut butter by a scantily-clad male model, from a half-price vintage spoon on a beach somewhere in the Caribbean. Nope, a gigantic bag of slightly soft broccoli or multiple packets of wrinkled lemon thyme for 6p a pop is what does it for me.

So imagine my delight when this Friday night (I know, I know, my life is just too glamorous to bear), I stumbled across the yellow-stickered bounty of cut-price dreams in said reduced section. Bag upon bag of slightly slimy, browning mushrooms, courgettes with slightly tarnished, leather soft skins, spinach, kale, sprouting broccoli, strawberries, raspberries- All in all, my bulging basket resembled not only the makings of a very well fed bag lady, but the makings of a damn good soup.

But the jewel in the crown of my treasure chest? Without a doubt the stash of brown skinned, black flecked bananas which, despite looking more like leopard skinned slugs than vaguely edible, just screamed to be cooked with. And for 7 whole pence for about 15 of these bruised beauties, it would be rude not to.

And what do you do with a bunch of black bananas, a lazy Sunday morning and nothing in the house for breakfast except the dregs of the Rice Crispie box and a couple of eggs? As Jack Johnson so rightly crooned as he filled our summers with carefree ukulele tinkling and dreams of a being shark tooth choker wearing Hawaiian surfer; eatin’ banana pancakes is the only way to go. 

Delicately spiced with sweet cinnamon and studded with slices of the fragrant, super ripe banana, these are a brunch lovers dream. Add a drizzle of salted maple peanut butter, crunchy, sweet and with just enough bite from a sprinkle of rock salt crystals, a scattering of crushed walnuts and a drizzle of rich maple syrup and you will be in pancake-flipping heaven. Go on, those wrinkly bananas are looking at you...

Banana & Cinnamon Pancakes with Salted Maple Peanut Butter

140g self raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

2 tbsp light brown soft sugar

3 ripe bananas, 2 mashed and one sliced

2 large egga, lightly beaten

25g butter, melted (plus a little extra for frying)

100ml milk

1 tsp cinnamon

A pinch of salt

For the salted maple peanut butter

100g crunchy peanut butter

50g maple syrup

A good sprinkle of rock salt

To serve

Crushed walnuts

Some extra sliced banana

A drizzle of maple.

To make the pancakes, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. Add the beaten eggs, butter, milk and mashed banana and stir well, until you have a smooth batter.

Heat a little butter in a large saucepan on a medium heat, until frothing. Add ladlefuls of the pancake batter, waiting until small bubbles appear on the surface before studding the uncooked side with slices of banana. When nicely golden, flip and cook the other side.

To make the peanut butter drizzle, combine all the ingredients in a small bowl.

When the pancakes are ready, serve with a drizzle of the peanut butter, a scattering of the crushed walnuts and some banana slices, and a drizzle of maple syrup. EAT.

M1lk is good for you...

Weekend brunch is my favourite mealtime of all time. Ever. Without question.

Yup, with ridiculously enormous papers strewn around me like the foundations of an ink covered fort, the unavoidable last minute scrabble in the depths of my handbag for an (almost always) inkless pen to fill the two clues I have any idea about in the cross word, sipping endless cups of rich, creamy flat whites; a few hours of glorious coffee and bacon fuelled rapture after a week of keyboards, boardrooms and boredom, is the absolute ultimate.

 Add the chance discovery of the utopia of what all weekend breakfasts should be in a cafe just a scenic ten minute stroll from my front door and you will begin to understand the enthusiastic manner in which I leap out of bed and into my converse of a Saturday morning. M1lk (note the trendy ‘1’), is the place. A Balham institution that sees queues longer than the line for the clean(ish) toilets at Glastonbury week upon week; it is a mecca of pillowy buckwheat pancakes, smoothies in oh-so-trendy milk bottles and a menu full of foraged, seasonal ingredients that I have not even the faintest idea how to pronounce.

On the corner of Hildreth Street market (where they buy all the seasonal fruit for their delicious pint o’smoothies), the light and breezy, delightfully mismatching cafe is strewn with tropical prints that hang on wooden pegs from a string across the huge windows, and is without fail, totally packed. With a bar scattered with icons of the virgin Mary, vintage books and slightly creepy looking doll’s heads, tempting yuzu and pistachio cakes and coconut flecked, fist sized lamingtons on candy hued cake stands; it is cool. Achingly so, a dead giveaway being the top-knotted waitresses that clearly have to pass a written exam on the history of Reebok classics and the theory of wearing your trousers just short enough to be questionable.

But, although the staff have without doubt been instructed on the trendiest way to describe the weekly changing pancake special (usually making an unannounced bob down next to the table, using lots of superlatives and peppering everything with a few essential ‘ok, guys’), it still manages to steer well clear of ‘try-hard’. I mean, when describing pancakes topped with such delights as blood orange jam, hazelnut popcorn brittle and vanilla bean mascarpone, a little bit of enthusiastic chirping is most definitely allowed, short trousers or not. Add to that elderflower clotted cream, green almond crunch, camomile flowers, nutella caramel and nesquik mascapone (say whaaa?!), and I think it’s fair to say that this place really is deserving of the well rehearsed speech.

It is the best. I have tried avoiding the queues and heading elsewhere, but to be honest, much like heading to the seriously less-clean loos at Glasto, it will undoubtedly lead to massive disappointment. If entirely devoid of any loo-roll related crises. Hopefully...

But seriously, how can you turn down rich, nutty americanos from the Workshop Coffee co., made in an aeropress and served with a miniature milk (sorry, M1lk) bottle of, well, milk? How could you judge that the winding queue of trendies and buggy toting yummy mummies is not worth the legendary ‘Convict’; a toasted proper English muffin stuffed with Burford Brown egg, Noen’s & Sons sausage patty, homemade poacher hash and hangover sauce is worth missing out on? Occasionally (and foolishly) compared to the notorious egg and sausage McMuffin down the road, don't even contemplate skipping the queue and missing out on this beauty. This is a McMuffin fallen from heaven. 

Last weekend, as my perpetually hungry boyfriends and I ventured the few minutes South to partake in our weekly M1lk ritual, I went for one of those tongue-twisting concoctions that make the pre-ordering nerves akin to waiting to be called in to your year 9 French oral. “Turkish baked eggs (I got that bit ok...) with...” and here is where I proceeded to jab at the distressed brown paper menu like a true Brit abroad (well, I am a Clapham girl now, after all). I got there in the end, but for this purpose must resort to inserting words copied straight from the menu, and still without any indication of what “kriskrainer and labne...” might actually mean (Could be a hot new DJ duo headlining the BBC introducing stage at Glasto , for all I know)...

As it turns out, my cast iron skillet of neon-orange yolked baked eggs arrived strewn with buttery, garlic rich sautéed spinach, an elegant blob of sharp Turkish yoghurt, salty hunks of fried sausage and strewn with a whimsical scattering of wild flowers. Word of warning here, by the way- from the sourdough with goats cheese and red clover honeycomb to the burnt butter eggs Benedict, many dishes come with a girly flourish of freshly foraged flowers much to every instagrammers delight and many the burly boyfriend's (including my army commando one's) dismay.  Said boyfriend, avoiding the rose petals and remaining ever the off-piste orderer (he fits in so well), went for charred English asparagus with miso butter and crisp, panko coated deep fried Burford Brown from the seasonable, forever evolving specials board.

As always, it was totally and utterly, 100%, grade A gorgeous. My side of the table, super soft eggs contrasted beautifully with the slightly sharp, creamy yoghurt and meaty mouthfuls of sausage was right on the money (which, I might add here, is not on the cheap side, but totally worth it). The asparagus, lightly charred and the perfect partner to the aromatic, salty miso and crispy shreds of nori, did what M1lk does best- showcasing foraged, seasonal and wonderful British produce in exciting, interesting dishes that never fail to be perfectly cooked, seasoned and enthusiastically delivered by the scrunchie wearing staff.

Wickedly good. And certainly not the place to implement my boyfriend's recent request that I try writing a less than totally positive review for a change. Yup, unfortunately (for him), M1lk, with all it's butternut, feta and sage baked eggs, burnt butter hazelnut cakes and edible sweet pea garnishes, is never going to be the place to bring out the negatives. It is just too. Damn. Good. 

Maybe my quest for pessimism will have to resort to that McMuffin after all...

Flippin' Lovely...

As I discovered while in America last year, a time spent practically living in aluminium and leather clad diners, chomping down on Cobb salads and slurping malted milkshakes whenever given the opportunity; pancakes are a hungry girl’s best friend. The star-spangled showstoppers of an American breakfast menu, I ate them speckled with banana polka dots, topped with fresh berries and Chantilly cream, and even smothered in hot apple sauce and sizzling sausages. Yup, I was indeed hungry a lot, and pancakes helped me out of the notorious hunger-induced personality coma on more than one occasion.

From all those plate sized, pillowy stacks that I consumed by the bucket-load in the US, to the infinitely more flippable, paper-thin creations that us Brits douse in lemon and sugar and try to avoid getting stuck to the ceiling, who would’ve thought that a bit of flour, egg and milk would be such an enduring hit? Yes, although they are essentially just a few small ingredients away from the gloop we all remember using to stick newspaper to a balloon at primary school, pancakes have been flipped and feasted upon since prehistoric times- beating porridge and even the humble loaf as the world’s first cereal based favourite. And for good reason, all you need is a few cheap-as-chips ingredients, a pan, and this one is kind of essential, some kind of heat- Well, the cavemen didn’t make fire for nothing...

As the perfect host for a huge variety of both sweet and savoury toppings and fillings, pancakes bask in the same levels of kitchen popularity as Justin Beiber does on Twitter; at every turn there is another delicious ingredient desperate to get involved with these ridiculously versatile rounds of batter (the pancakes I mean, not the Beibernator.) There is of course the quintessential Shrove Tuesday staple of lemon and sugar, with bottles and bags of the stuff pushed right to the front of the supermarket shelves as the big day approaches, but why not take a break from all the familiar sprinkling and squeezing and push the boat out a little this year?

How about the old-American favourite streaky bacon and maple syrup? Or maybe bananas and pineapple cooked in rum and brown sugar; with some delicious coconut yoghurt (Rachel’s Organic is amazing)? Chocolate chips, stewed cinnamon apples, blueberries, nutella, icecream; the possibilities are pretty much endless. Even if savoury is more your thing; try filling a few thin crepes with roasted butternut squash, walnuts, spinach and blue cheese, rolling and placing in a dish, before smothering in crème fraiche and parmesan and baking in a hot oven.

For me, the flipping is going to begin at Breakfast. Yup, as this blog probably makes unavoidably clear, I am a huge lover of any kind of cake; so, on the day that we are actually encouraged to eat them in preparation for the Lenten fast that we will no-doubt all be embarking upon on Wednesday (PAH), I am not going to waste any time. Inspired by the fruit filled, unbelievably delicious, big-as-your-face pancakes that I ate for (very late) breakfast in a Philidelphia last year, these gorgeously light ginger and oat American pancakes, smothered in strawberry and rhubarb compote and topped with natural yoghurt are definitely on the menu in the Gaffer house. Inspired by the beautifully pink forced rhubarb that I spotted in the greengrocers, I just make the compote a day or so before, whip up the batter and whaddya know, your brekkie is ready in a flash.

And if cooking a breakfast any more complicated than Readybrek on a school-day still sounds a little too much like hard work (I don’t blame you), then these are the perfect lazy weekend treat. Double or triple the recipe depending on how many sleeping shapes you have managed to accumulate on your sofa or living room floor, they will love you for it, this is a very impressive, and totally moreish start to the day. And if you are feeling slightly less virtuous than topping your breakfast with rhubarb, maybe throw some chocolate chips in to the batter and top with sliced banana and syrup; it is the weekend after all!

 However they reach your table, as you sit with one hand holding the Sunday paper, and the other happily engaged in transporting yummy forkfuls to your mouth, you will never look at those coco-pops again...                 

             
Gingery Oat Pancakes with Strawberry and Rhubarb Compote. Serves 5 hungry people...

Compote:

4 sticks of rhubarb, chopped

8 strawberries, quartered

2tbsp light brown soft sugar

2 tbsp caster sugar

Juice and Zest of 1 orange

2 tbsp syrup from a jar of stem ginger

Pancakes:

200g plain flour (wholemeal works well)

120g rolled oats

2 heaped tsp baking powder

1 _1/2 tsp ground ginger

5 Large eggs

2tbsp natural yoghurt

200ml milk

2 balls of stem ginger, chopped, plus 3tbsp of the syrup

Honey and natural yoghurt, to serve.

To make the compote, put all of the ingredients in a pan and bring to the boil. Turn down the heat and simmer for about 30 minutes, or until the fruit is soft and the compote is quite thick and syrupy. 

Make a day or so in advance and keep in the fridge if you are short for time, or just fancy a lie in!

Now, make the pancake batter; in a large bowl, mix the dry ingredients, make a well in the centre and whisk in the eggs and yoghurt.

Beat in the milk and ginger (including the syrup) to make a thick batter.

Heat a slightly oiled pan until quite hot. Spoon large circles on to the pan, cook until bubbling, flip and cook on the other side until golden.

Stack on to a plate, top with the compote, spoon over some natural yoghurt and a drizzle of honey. Yum!