This is my small contribution to the falafel making discussions. I have till now, only ever either made a packet mix one or bought someone else’s and re-heated them. I have read many posts and people saying sadly that their falafel fell apart and what was the secret, so I have been reading and asking a little and Lynne has been making them too and I think between us we are establishing some clues…. Continue reading
In the freezer I had three pieces of pastry flattened into neat circles and packed away in the freezer from making Dan Lepard’s cheese pastry from Short & Sweet the other week; you can see the pie I made with it here on the ShortandTweet roundup at the very bottom of the post. I used Quark and Felin Ganol’s flour in this pastry.
EM (Evidence Matters) has told me how wonderful a good piece of Lancashire cheese could be, and took the trouble to recommend me a particular sort made by Mrs Kirkhams, which we have found at Waitrose (pre-packed version) The label says ‘rich ivory cheese, buttery, tangy and complex, made with raw cows milk’. I am not brilliant at describing tastes but this was delectable and lived up to what it says on the label.
EM also suggested following Simon Hopkinson’s mother’s cheese and onion pie filling recipe from the BBC food site which uses this cheese and putting Dan’s pastry on the top as a single crust pie so I had a go last night. 
I had a small issue about the quantity of onion to use and how to chop it up. This is the trouble with trying to follow a recipe, you stare at the words, hoping for clues, you look at the picture, you read the words. You think. You mutter to yourself, “Oh I don’t know..” and, if you are me, your common sense – the little you have – flies out of the window and wanders off to water the primulas. 
Of course I should have cut the onions a little shorter, and grated the cheese cold and I would probably have done that if I hadn’t been following a recipe, strange the effect they have on me, do they do that to you?
We won’t talk about the flapping around trying to find an appropriate pan, I don’t have a pie dish as such, apart from the anodised Mermaid one I used here. I need a fancy pie dish! Support me on this please.
Hanging up in the garage, my French onions were somewhat depleted and one was sprouting huge shoots and had nothing left to give. I had two small pinky ones and one large Spanish onion, so that is what I used. Today, belatedly, I thought to tweet EM and ask her about quantities of onions and she recommends 500 grams of uncooked onion for the quantities in this recipe. I have no idea what mine weighed, I just used what I had which is all any sensible person cooking at home does.
I also made the mistake of leaving my cheese out to warm up. You see I wanted to taste the cheese before I made the pie (there’s always a reason!). This made it harder to grate and it clumped together a bit which meant I had to eat more as I went along, so maybe there should have been more in the pie; cook’s perks!
The onions took a long time to reduce down on a low temperature, as I was trying not to let them go brown. Having made this once, I realise that I should have left them even longer to get really quite dry with no visible moisture at all. I decorated the top of the pastry with little tears to symbolise all that chopping of onions.
This method of cooking onions though, results in a wonderfully sweet and rich flavour and combined with Mrs Kirkhams Lancashire cheese and topped with a piece of light pastry made a naughty supper accompanied by purple sprouting broccoli. Here it is chilled down for lunch the next day with half a tomato and a few sacrificial salad leaves from the micro green tub on the windowsill.
EM has also suggested putting slices of boiled potato in the bottom of the dish next time, so I might try that. I’ll tell you one thing though, if they eat like this in Lancashire farmhouses they are eating well! Thank you EM for introducing me to this lovely cheese and a new pie and all the fantastic advice you give. You are a treasure!
Before anyone says anything, yes I know these aren’t pancakes and that pancakes are flat and cooked on both sides in a frying pan. However, these are what I was asked to make today by Brian and he doesn’t ask for specific things very often; he was made to eat salad, griddled vegetables and chicken first. (Griddled by the way for my overseas friends, means cooked on a flat cast iron pan with ridges on the stove top in my British home.)
I had never heard of these round batter balls which resemble nothing more than a slightly sweet Yorkshire Pudding masquerading as a miniature football until I saw the pan for sale in the Lakeland catalogue. Once I had the pan I set about finding out about them and the traditions associated with them. Before all the Danes tell me I’m making them at the wrong time of year and they are for eating before Christmas with glogg, yes I know that but they are too nice to only have in December and a quick squint down the Wiki list of Aebleskiver traditions in the States shows them being eaten at all times of the year, including this very night in Urbandale, Iowa, so I had company!
I think we didn’t have them as children because my Mother wouldn’t have liked their squidgy insides, she liked her pancakes more in the French style, thin and crispy crepes, like the ones I make usually. I don’t remember them either at any of my relatives’ homes, but maybe my sister remembers them?
Aebleskiver (literally apple slices) are far more common in their native country, Denmark and I suspect in the USA too, which has so many people of Danish descent living there. Certainly the internet is swamped with videos and restaurants offering these robust pancake balls and it is easy enough to work out the technique from watching a few videos.
The recipe I used for my batter is adapted from a sourdough aebleskiver formula from Teresa of NorthWest Sourdough, which you can find in her wonderful E-book and as a pdf on her site. My version doesn’t have much sugar in and uses a lot less butter, but it’s basically the same sort of thing. Any thick pancake or waffle type batter will do a similar job.
Brian and I speculated as we drizzled golden syrup over the tops of ours as to whether in fact Yorkshire puddings were a legacy of the Viking invasion and whether or not we could make Yorkshire puddings this way at Christmas, using dripping in the batter. We thought it might be rather good. Yorkshire Puddings, though now eaten with the meat and veggies all together on the plate, were I believe eaten with sugar as a ‘pudding’ originally, cooked beneath the roasting meat and basted with the fat and juices that dripped down as the meat cooked.
Anyway, these are great fun to make and if you can find a pan at a reasonable price, it is one that I have used several times and we are very fond of making them. These ones today we filled with small pieces of apple, but we have tried them with banana and eaten them with yoghurt and icing sugar on top too.
I think they could catch on here if the pans were cheaper. I know that you can currently get them from a Danish food importer based here in the UK so if you really want one have a quick google and you will find them.
All photos copyright Brian Kent 2012.
Zeb Bakes 