Monthly Archives: March 2013

Sourdough Mashed Potato Pancakes

25th March 2013

Sourdough Potato Pancakes

I thought I would contribute this small brunch dish to the ‘what shall I do with my old starter’ conversation.

Not everything in life needs a recipe and these are a prime example.

I had some old starter in the fridge from when I had been away and when I stirred it up it had a bit of life in it still. I dipped a finger in and had a taste, sour but not unacceptable.

It was so cold yesterday that I thought we had better have something warm for lunch.

So I dry fried a couple of slices of Lindsays of Cockermouth’s best dry cure middle cut bacon, no nasty white stuff coming out of this like the supermarket rubbish, and not very salty either, a little black pudding for Brian and a few tomatoes with a splash of balsamic vinegar to give them a bit more taste than they have at this time of year.

I then found a small bowl of mashed potatoes from last night’s supper in the fridge and thought oh why not…

So here is the method. Forgive the quantities.

In a large bowl

Pour in your old starter
Add a couple of large spoonfuls of cold mashed potato
A glass or two of milk (skimmed is fine)
A couple of spoonfuls of flour
Two large eggs
A pinch of salt

Whisk it all up, but don’t worry too much about the little lumps of mashed potato.
Heat a small pan on the hob.
Put the oven on a keep warm setting and pop a plate in.
Chase a fingernail’s worth of butter round the pan once it is hot.
Tip little ladles of mixture into the pan and swirl them round.
Cook on one side, till nice and golden brown, flip and cook the other side.
Stack on the warm plate in the oven.

Sourdough Mashed Potato Pancakes with Brown Sauce

Serve your sourdough mashed potato pancakes with optional brown sauce and toppings and a large mug of tea.

That’s it. No added sugar, no added fat. I can’t believe that this is particularly bad for you, but the food police might say it is. I don’t care.

Soft and fluffy and just the thing for a hungry gap.

Hills, Cheese, Snow, Cake

Grasmor from Harris Park, Cockermouth

19th March 2013

As you can see it is pretty wintry still in England this week. This view of the fells from Harris Park in Cockermouth gives you a feel for the raw and unsettled weather we have at the moment.

Windfarm on Cumbrian fields Today we drove in search of Dad’s opthamology appointment to two different hospitals as he wasn’t sure which one it was in, which added a certain frisson to the proceedings, but all went well and we had a lovely drive over the fells, waved at the sea at Whitehaven, and passed the windfarms on the fells as the snow and sleet gusted around us.

We returned via Thornby Moor Dairy Cheese Farm (as recommended by our friend Andrew Auld of the Loaf in Crich) where we sampled and bought some wonderful cheeses.

Thornby Moor Dairy

Cumberland Farmhouse Cheese from Thornby Moor Dairy, Carlisle

Cheeses made with unpasteurized milk from shorthorns, delicious goat cheeses and artisan farmhouse cheeses.

Before being unwrapped and cut

We admired the timeline of cheese on the shelves and then returned to Cockermouth for lunch. Edit: In view of some of your comments I will try and add a bit more here – I may not have understood this in its entirety but the cheese maker who came out to help us expalined that the rows of cheeses on the shelves were all the same cheese, the small version of the farmhouse cheese at different points between 0 – 3 months. The mould gathers on the outside of the cloth the cheese is wrapped in, which is removed before being presented for sale. The dairy produces a blue cheese but this wasn’t it. I apologise if I haven’t got this quite right.

Maturing cheese at Thornby Moor Dairy Cheese Farm

This afternoon we popped out to the New Bookshop for coffee and cake.

Coffee and Gingerbread

The New Bookshop alone has sold more than 200 copies of The Cockermouth Poets, which I think is pretty impressive for a poetry anthology!

The Cockermouth Poets

Zeb has been not very well but we hope he is finally on the mend. He loves it up here usually and he has been very miserable. We love the out of hours vets who gave him pain relief on Sunday night at 10 30 pm when he couldn’t stand up without twisting and turning. Yesterday he managed to produce part of the bag that he ate 12 days ago which has somehow managed to travel through his digestive tract and re-appear as a gigantic Cuban cigar of rolled leather. So lets hope that he recovers fully. He slept in the middle of the bed last night.

Now it’s time to cook supper again: roast vegetables and chicken pieces I think, and maybe sharpen the kitchen knives before I start.

At times like these

17th March 2013

Attempting to post via the clunky wordpress app on the ipad… so if it looks odd that is why…

Good Morning! We drove up to Cumbria last night and disgorged the contents of the car into Dad’s house plus two poodles, who are good travellers but very bad at sleeping first night in unfamiliar places.

Consequently one fell off the bed at 3.45 am with a loud thump. That is the same one who was in and out of vet most of last week, having eaten all the leather straps, tags and bobs on the manbag.

There was restless padding about, snuffling, grumbling, it went on and on, so in the interests of everyone I came down, stood by the backdoor while they hurtled out in the sleet, snorting and huffing, trampling snowdrops and so on. Then they came back in, presumably having scared up any resident shrew or hedgehog picking up the remains of the bird seed. They then expected to be rewarded for this appalling behaviour with food. I thought not. Sleep has eluded me and I am so not amused.

So here I am several hours later, pretending to take revenge by leaving the dog outside for all of five minutes.

She is back indoors now, carrying her squeaky toy around and asking for a game.

Dad has been profiled in local glossy magazine, Cumbria Life, quite surreal to imagine people staring at this while they sit in the dentist’s waiting room.