Tossers

Why are you eating pancakes today? It's all about Easter, innit. Whether you call it Pancake Day, Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras, it's the day before Lent starts. Lent, you will remember, is 40 days of abstinence in sympathy for Jesus' 40 days of starvation in the desert. (He was obviously in the wrong place because the deserts I've been to have offered dune-buggying, belly-dancing, brothels and a lot of fast food among other diversions.) So today we use up all our rich food - eggs, milk, flour and butter - and make pancakes in preparation for the next few weeks' fasting. You might choose to use up any other combination of rich foods, but I'm not taking responsibility for that.

Poffertjes

Not only is the whole country as flat as a pancake, but The Netherlands is famous for its poffertjes (above) - mini pancakes eaten with sugar. Whether you are tucking into pancakes drenched with sugar, lemon, maple syrup, Nutella, jam, or stuffed with savoury delights, spare a thought for the inhabitants of Iceland and Finland who celebrate by eating salted meat and peas or pea soup. In Newfoundland, cooks put fortune-telling tokens into the pancakes: A coin means wealth, a nail means they will marry a carpenter (or possibly a trip to A&E), etc.

Have you decided what to give up for Lent? Can you resist temptation for 40 days? Maybe you could resurrect your new year's resolutions if they have flagged (and if you can remember them). You should also be ready to confess your sins today. Anything you want to tell me?

YumYumBubblegum's pancake recipe

Happy New Year!

Today is the start of the Chinese new year - the year of the snake. According to Chinese wisdom, having a snake in the house is a good omen, meaning that the family will not starve. Lucky for us, we have two, so I confidently predict I will be sharing my food with you for another year. The snake follows the dragon in the Chinese calendar. Dragon years are very lucky but snake years are less so and they may put people off doing big things like weddings, moving house or giving birth. You have been warned.

Sunday lunch

If you want to theme your food today, I suggest you try some stir-fried prawns with noodles, accompanied by Asian greens. You can make the whole meal in less than 15 minutes with these ingredients: noodles, spinach, raw prawns, garlic, soy sauce, sweet chilli sauce, sesame oil, chilli flakes

Cook some dried noodles in water with half a chicken stock cube added to it (or use fresh noodles and skip this step).

Greens: Gently melt a knob of butter in a pan and add a crushed clove of garlic and some spinach. Let it cook until the spinach starts to wilt and then add a couple of tablespoons soy sauce, a teaspoon of sesame oil and a pinch of chilli flakes. Stir well.

Prawns: Heat some vegetable oil in a pan, add some crushed garlic, raw prawns, soy sauce (preferably the light kind) and sweet chilli sauce and stir well until the prawns turn pink. Use about 2 tablespoons chilli sauce for every one of soy. Tip in the noodles and give them a swish around in the cooking juices, then serve with the greens.

Stop, thief!

It's a bad day for retail when you visit your local High Street for the first time in weeks with high hopes and flexible plastic - but all you come away with is a packet of fake/joke flies (cost £1). So to cheer myself up I thought I'd indulge in a bit of theft. Not old-fashioned pilfering from Tesco like Anthony Worrall Thompson, but new-fangled internet plagiarism from another blogger: Blackberry and Almond Traybake from English Kitchen Baking. When these popped into my inbox I knew I had to make them straight away. I hope you feel the same.

Fruity, cakey, almondy, squidgy... gorgeous

Blackberry and almond traybake

250g butter

250g caster sugar

2 eggs, beaten

120g plain flour

225g ground almonds

300g blackberries (frozen)

a few drops of almond essence

Pre-heat oven to 180/gas 4. Line a baking tin measuring about 30x20cm. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, add the eggs a little at a time, fold in the flour, ground almonds and essence. Tip into the tin and scatter the blackberries on top. Bake for about 45 minutes until golden brown. Dust with icing sugar when cool, or eat warm with cream.

Carrot cake

No time to make a cake? Think again. This might be the quickest one you'll ever make. I knocked it up while supervising two pans of simmering chilli (one veggie, one beef), cooking rice, refereeing sibling fights, defrosting a pot of salsa, fielding unwanted sales calls and making guacamole. The recipe comes from an old Sainsbury's card and is called Passion Cake. It will certainly stir passion within you for another slice.

Feeling the passion?

Passion cake

1 x 150g natural yogurt
110g grated carrots
75g raisins
2 teaspoons cinnamon
110g soft light brown sugar
150g self raising wholemeal flour
2 eggs, beaten

Topping:
125g cream cheese
50g butter, softened
225g icing sugar (sifted if you can be bothered)

Pre-heat oven to 180/gas 4. Place all the cake ingredients in a bowl and mix until combined. Transfer to a greased and lined 20cm square tin, and bake for 30-35 minutes. Mix the topping ingredients together and slather all over the top of the cake when it is cool.

Check out my buns

Perhaps it's something to do with the terror of being schooled by nuns from a young age, but I've always been obsessed by those coffee-iced choux buns they sell in French patisseries called Religieuses. So today I decided to make my own choux pastry - for the first time ever. I'd heard it's pretty easy, and yes, I did have misgivings when the pastry turned out to have the consistency of pancake batter, but I had faith in the recipe (and a decade of mumbled childhood prayers and unwilling Sunday mornings in church). You can see the results of my first attempt at the end of this post. Refusing to accept defeat, and spurred on by the scorn of the "it's easy" brigade, I finally got there with the help of a Delia recipe:

Chocolate and coffee choux buns

Delia says this will make 30 buns but I made about 10, being totally ham-fisted. It kind of depends what shape you're making and how big each one is.

60g plain flour (she stipulates 'strong plain flour' but I used the ordinary sort)
a teaspoon of caster sugar
150ml cold water
50g butter, cut into pieces
2 eggs, beaten well

Preheat oven to 200/gas 6. Put the water and butter into a pan and heat gently until it reaches boiling point and the butter has melted - then remove from the heat straight away. While that's happening, measure out the flour and sugar and beat the eggs. Locate and plug in an electric hand-held mixer. When the water and butter is ready tip the flour and sugar in quickly while beating vigorously. Keep going for about a minute until you have a smooth ball of paste. Now add the beaten eggs, a little at a time, beating well all the while. This should result in a smooth, glossy paste. Spoon mounds of it onto a greased baking sheet, leaving at least a couple of centimetres between each one. Bake on a high shelf for 10 minutes, then turn up the heat to 220/gas 7 and bake for another 10-20 minutes until the buns are a light golden brown colour. I would suggest watching them like a hawk at this stage. Once out of the oven, transfer them to a wire rack and pierce the side of each one with a knife to let the steam out.

Fill with whipped whipping/double cream. I topped mine with chocolate sauce (see below) and coffee glacé icing, but you could use melted chocolate, or just icing sugar. You could put jam or lemon curd inside the buns with the cream.

Chocolate sauce: Melt together 50g butter, 2 tablespoons golden syrup, 2 tablespoons drinking chocolate. Remove from the heat about 30 seconds after it starts to boil.

Coffee glacé icing. Melt a teaspoon instant coffee in a little boiling water, then add enough icing sugar to make a thick but spreadable icing.

First attempt: Anyone for poppadoms?

Cheese and onion quiche

The 8 year old vegetarian is giving me a headache; she has also given me an excuse to indulge my latest passion - buying cookery books from eBay. As I usually shop with one eye on the telly, the books that arrive can be a bit of a surprise, but what an education! Anyone for minced tongue and bacon with hot beetroot relish, liver sausage flan or hydropathic pudding?

Today's recipe for cheese and onion quiche is from an old favourite, The Big Food and Drink Book, which accompanied the tv series (remember Jilly Goolden's mad hair and mad wine descriptions?).

No liver sausage in this flan

Cheese and onion quiche   

Ready made pastry

a large knob of butter

225g onions, peeled and thinly sliced

150g Gruyere/Leicester cheese, finely grated (I used half Cheddar, half Gruyere)

2 eggs

1 egg yolk

100ml milk (I used up some double cream mixed with skimmed milk)

Pre-heat oven to 220/gas 7. Fry the onions gently in the butter until they are soft and sweet, but not browned. Line a 20cm (8inch) metal flan dish with the pastry, spread the onions across the base and top with the grated cheese. Beat the eggs, yolk, and milk together and pour them over the cheese and onion. Cook for about 25 minutes, then turn down the oven to 190/gas 5 and cook for another 10 minutes until the top is brown. 

Old Mother Hubbard's Sunday lunch

The cupboard was very bare so she went to the freezer instead. She found a single piece of cod and two salmon steaks. "Aha" she thought, "these will defrost quickly". The children weren't so keen and started squabbling about who would have the cod (salmon is pesce non grata here) and generally mithering about being made to eat fish. And then Child 1 had the bright idea of dipping the fish in breadcrumbs mixed with parmesan and shallow frying it. We did, and it was an unqualified success.

The magic ingredient

Cod and salmon in crunchy parmesan breadcrumbs

I had lots of home made breadcrumbs in the freezer (the by-product of making my own bread with tough crusts), and used a couple of handfuls mixed with a handful of grated Parmesan. I dipped each piece of fish in beaten egg, then dragged it through the breadcrumbs mixture, before frying in about 3 tablespoons hot olive oil for a few minutes each side.