richard Another slightly involved yet very tasty recipe from the mighty Dan ‘Love Bites’ Lepard. The slightly involved element is both understatement and DL raison d’etre and doubtless all his recipes benefit from the multi-tiered preparation, but SOMETIMES you want to make something you can eat while you can still remember starting the recipe. These are good though.
Preparation time: 10 minutes plus overnight soaking
Cooking time: 35 – 45 minutes
Skill level: Easy
Makes: Enough for four
Ingredients
- rolled oats – 50g
- strong white flour – 200g
- ½ small onion – finely chopped
- 1 large egg
- fast action yeast – ½ tsp
- baking powder – ½ tsp
- 1 good handful parsley – roughly chopped
- salt – a little under 1 tsp
- butter – for frying
The night before you fancy a tasty pikelet, put the oats in a large bowl, pour over 500ml of boiling water and leave until warm. Beat in the yeast, 150g of the flour and the onion, cover the bowl and leave overnight at room temperature.
Next morning, beat in the egg, the remaining flour, salt, baking powder and parsley.
Leave to rest for 30 minutes.
While this is happening, prepare whatever it is you want to eat with your pikelets – grilled tomatoes, bacon, sausages, baked beans, etc.
Place a little butter in a frying pan, heat and ladle in the batter to make small pancakes.
When the top has just set, flip over and cook the other side.
Keep your pikelets warm as you cook the rest of the batch.
Serve.
Verdict: These would make a great weekend breakfast/brunch/elevensies/lunch/tea/snack. They go particularly well with a fry-up.
Drink: Parsley Pikelets and MasterChef are best enjoyed with a glass of wine.
Entertainment: ‘MasterChef’ of course. Despite Gregg slightly shifting the emphasis of his catch phrase from ‘DOES-n’t‘ to ‘COOK-ing‘, this latest series is reassuringly similar to the last. The one RADICAL departure from the format is the selection of an extra finalist if the contestants are considered too good to split “Choosing between you two was very difficult, soooooooooo………….you’re both going through.” The converse also happens if the standard is low. This now seems to happen so frequently it has become a new MasterChef cliche. And talking of cliches, if India Fisher says “The contestants have been on their feet 6 hours now but there is no let up as they return to MasterChef HQ…etc.” once more I’ll …………
I was once attacked by an army of slugs brandishing parsley pikelets. The uprising seemed to stem from the bottom of the garden and some were even armed with curly kale cutlasses and rosehip rapiers – viscious weapons of mass concoction. Thank the lord ‘The Lepard’ doesn’t bake fennel flintlocks.