Belleau Kitchen Challenge...Random Recipe 30

I love Dom's Challenge and I do it every month. I follow the challenge to the letter. I count the books, or randomly select one as required. Then I bake the cake, knead the bread, make the casserole or toss the pancakes. Just as the challenge dictates. I take the requisite photograph. Usually more than one...I take photos...lots of them. 

The hairs are standing up on the back of my neck. I can feel Dom saying, "OH NO YOU DON'T!" 

"I DO DOM, HONESTLY"...But you don't know that I do it every time. You see, I'm a little bit tardy...and I love the making and photographing but I'm not so good at the words. The post will be there...the draft copy all ready to press the 'PUBLISH' button...except for the text. They are still there, all the ones I've missed...waiting in a kind of blog-land limbo. Like the Persian Milk bread I made two months ago...apart from the words. That's when I start to dawdle...I drag my blogpost-writing feet. 

But at last I've got a riddle on. Still it's going to be on the last minute...just in the nick of time... 

Here's my contribution to the lovely Dom's, Belleau Kitchen Random Recipe Challenge No 30, which isn't hard at all and really fun to join in. You can find the rules here on Dom's blog.

My random book number thirty turned out to be Miss Dahl's Voluptuous Delights. Page thirty, Indian sweet potato pankcakes. Perfect Sunday breakfast. 

To make enough for two people you will need:

• 2 egg whites
• 340g/1 1/2 cups of cooked coarsely mashed sweet potatoes
• 2 medium sized spring onions/scallions, chopped
• 1 1/2 teaspoons of curry powder
• 1 pinch of ground cumin
• Salt and pepper
• Groundnut oil

The method is very simple. You beat the egg whites in a bowl and then add all the other ingredients apart from the oil, and mix well with your fingertips. Heat up the oil in a frying pan. Then form neat little pancakes...and drop them into the hot oil, squashing down a little with a spatula. Then cook for about five minutes on each side. Sophie recommends turning over for a final blast of heat on the first side before serving. 

I can't express enough just how tasty these ordinary looking little pancakes are. They have crunchy outsides and hot soft spicy middles. I forgot to add the onions, so we ate the pancakes with the crunchy fresh spring onions and cold sour yoghurt. Scrumptious. I will definitely be making lots of these. They would be a great vegetarian alternative to a cooked English breakfast...good for visitors.

The process of making them was so relaxing...Maybe something to do with the lovely Miss Dahl herself and her languorous way. Whilst standing over the pan cooking the hot little patties I had found myself imagining  Miss D lip-sinking Bollywood films (you must read the book) or of beautifully bangled and sari clad ladies bending over open fires tending their pancakes, and my mother-in-law teaching me to make Persian lamb cutlets along with wise words in her broken English, not to turn them too soon....

It's this simplicity that I love about Sophie Dahl's cooking. Not too many ingredients, but good ones. She even cuts down on the tools, using fingers instead of fork for mixing. But the best bit about her book is the history, always a little nostalgic tale attached...a nod to her tale-telling granddad...or should that be tail...

...there's just time to for you to join in if you get a riddle on too...coming...?
debx

Random Recipe 25 The Choice is Yours - "unadulterated manna"

 

...That's how Sophie Dahl described her banana bread, when fresh out of the oven, eaten "with a lick of butter."She also said that she used to make it "in the fierce winters" when she "lived in New York and it was too freezing to do anything but bake."

We have nothing to compare with the snowstorm that's raging New York at the moment. But at the weekend it felt like someone had taken the little snow globe of Oxford, given it a subtle shake to produce a gentle powdery dusting of snow. The kitchen beckoned, as did the five black bananas in the freezer. Sounds a bit like the start of a horror film doesn't it? But actually it turned out to be just the antithesis.

I must explain. Dom's monthly Random Recipe Challenge that you can read about here, said that this month we could select a recipe book of choice. It was a toss-up between a few favourites, but Miss Dahl's Voluptuous Delights won. I randomly opened it at page 266 and 'Banana Bread'. I was a bit dubious that banana bread could ever be described as mana. But for the sake of the challenge, to use up the black bananas and  because I didn't think Miss Dahl would risk her reputation by telling  porkies, I was prepared to try.

You can find the (less than) Voluptuous Miss Dahl's Banana bread recipe on her website here. I can't print it here because it's copyright. As usual her ingredients were healthy and wholesome. Things like spelt flour and butter. I know what you're thinking, but butter is healthy. And her instructions were minimal. Just a bit of banana mashing, beating eggs and then combining everything. My kind of recipe. I did just adapt one of the items. The recipe asks for a cup of brown sugar. As we're trying not to use too much sugar but alternatives I only used half a cup of sugar, and half Maple syrup/honey mixture. I was worried that swapping all the sugar a dry ingredient for the other two wet ingredients may cause problems. I needn't have feared. It rose beautifully.

And the results amazingly are just as she described. Which is why it was speedily wolfed down by everyone. I must admit that I had more than my fair share. Especially when I discovered how well it tastes with a big dollop of Greek Yoghurt, freshly grated ginger, a sprinkling of ground cinnamon and the last drizzle from the bottle of Maple syrup.

Thanks to Dom's challenge I returned to a favourite book that I'd neglected of late. And I remembered a challenge I'd set myself a while ago, to try out each and every one of Miss Dahl's Delights...somehow on the way I got lost. So maybe it's time to begin again.