In trying to spend less money cooking, Jonah and I have been doing more vegetarian meals. This is why it’s wonderful that Jonah got this cookbook “Plenty” by Yotam Ottolenghi for his birthday. All vegetarian food, very unique ingredients and recipes. These green pancakes are the second thing we’ve made from it (the first was eggplant with buttermilk sauce, which hopefully Jonah will put up on the blog someday…), and they were delicious. Different from anything I’ve tasted and filled with green goodness. We didn’t have everything required for the recipe, so I’ll let you know what we included and what we skipped.
Note: Ottolenghi’s recipe for self rising flour is: 1 cup flour, 1 1/4 tsp baking powder, and a pinch of salt. it’s a little aggravating because you make over a cup of it and then only use 3/4 a cup in the recipe… but I was too lazy to do the math. 1 stick of butter at room temperature 1/2 lb spinach, washed Beat the butter in a bowl until it’s creamy. Add the rest of the ingredients. Wasn’t that hard? The recipe says to put it in plastic wrap, roll it into a sausage shape, and chill until firm. But we just covered it and threw it in the fridge until the pancakes were ready. While your sous-chef (Jonah) makes the butter, you can get started on the veggie prep. Wilt the spinach in a pan, then drain it in a sieve or colander, and when it’s cool, squeeze out as much excess liquid as possible. Chop roughly, and set aside. At this point, you can also chop your green onions and peppers so they’re ready to go when you need them. Now, in a mixing bowl (if you have an electric mixer, you can use it, but you’ll want it later to whip your egg white, so be aware that you’ll be swapping bowls and washing it to use it for something else), combine flour, baking powder, the whole egg, melted butter, salt, cumin, and milk. Mix until thoroughly combined and smooth. Now add all those green things you chopped up earlier. In your electric mixer, whisk the egg white “to soft peaks,” meaning you want it to hold a peak, but not be too stiff. Make sense? Now you can gently fold the whipped egg white into the pancake batter. Heat some oil (think 1/2 Tbl) in a frying pan over medium-high heat. Ladle the batter into the pan, using about 2 Tbl of batter per pancake. You want them to be fairly thin, so press the batter down gently. Cook them for 2 minutes a side, or until they’re nicely golden-brown (or golden-green, as the case may be). Transfer the pancakes to a paper towel and keep warm. When you’re done with all the batter, enjoy with a slab of lime butter on top! We ate these for dinner, but I can see them being a wonderful breakfast, and also a great way to get kids to eat some spinach! Enjoy!Green Pancakes with Lime Butter
Ingredients
zest of 1 lime
1 1/2 Tbl lime juice
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1 Tbl cilantro (we left this out)
1/2 garlic clove, finely chopped
1/4 tsp chile flakes
3/4 cup self-rising flour (see note above)
1 Tbl baking powder
1 egg
4 Tbl butter, melted
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cumin
2/3 cup milk
6 green onions, finely sliced
2 fresh green chiles, thinly sliced
1 egg white
olive oil for fryingInstructions
