Pudla: Pancakes on Parade

Every freezer contains, within its cold depths, a bag of peas, lurking way up the back. Grasp about in the dark and you’ll no doubt find other long-abandoned edibles worth retrieving, or perhaps dumping, in the process. Much as I like people - really, I do - there are days when being alone, at home, is much needed. Digging around in the freezer and standing in front of the pantry sighing can yield surprising results. The sort that make stepping out into the fray irrelevant. Discovering a very icy bag of green peas, still sweet despite their lengthy hibernation, made me ridiculously happy this weekend.

Besan or gram, a buff-coloured flour made of chickpeas, may not be an ingredient native to your panty, but that may change once you’ve tried Pudla. Egg-less, dairy-less pancakes, Pudla traditionally belong to the cooking of the mango-shaped state of Gujarat in western India. Some cooks liken these to crepes, but that’s not quite right – there’s a certain magic that eggs, milk and refined white flour weave that cannot be equalled by besan alone. I don’t envision serving these sweet, though you, of course, with a little tweaking, may. The batter is best when spicy and served as a quick, simple dinner or lunch to my way of thinking. There’s much that can be made with the flour besides; a veritable wealth of gorgeous recipes await the remainder of your stash.

Serve piping hot, straight from the pan, with an array of chutneys, salsas, relishes, pickles or some thick, strained yoghurt; whatever your fridge holds. I made a winter salsa with a prized tamarillo and an avocado, but don’t go to great lengths here. That would simply defeat the purpose. You don’t want to have to go shopping.

I may never leave the house again.

Pudla (chickpea pancakes) with ginger and crushed peas - feeds 2-3

From Madhur Jaffrey. I’ve made these a lot this week. Exactly how many times, I’m not willing to share. It’s a little embarrassing. These will not turn out to be perfectly round – each will take on its own, odd shape and that, for me, is part of their charm.

1 cup of frozen, shelled green peas
2 cups of chickpea flour (besan/gram)
1 teaspoon of ground cumin
Good pinch of ground turmeric
Good pinch of chilli powder
1 teaspoon of sea salt
2 cups of water
A large thumb of ginger
4 spring onions, finely sliced
A little olive oil, for frying

Cook the peas, in their frozen state, in boiling water according to the packet instructions and drain well. Lightly crush with either a fork or a potato masher.

Sift the chickpea flour, spices and salt into a roomy bowl. Make a well and slowly trickle the water into the centre, whisking in a little of the dry mixture from the sides as you go. There must be no lumps. Lumps are bad. Grate the ginger and squeeze the resulting juice into the mixture, whisk well and stir through the peas and spring onions. Rest, at room temperature, for 30 minutes.

Warm a frying pan over a medium-high heat and drizzle in a little oil. When hot, pour in a ladle of the mixture and cook for 2 minutes. They should be golden underneath. Drizzle the uncooked side with another dribble of oil before flipping and cooking for a further 2 minutes. Eat hot, straight from the pan.

Tamarillo and avocado salsa

My beautiful almost-mother-in-law Barbara often serves rosy-hued poached tamarillos for dessert. They are truly a sensational winter fruit. I’m indebted to Stephanie Alexander for the idea of using tamarillo in a salsa. This is rather good.

1 tamarillo
1 ripe but firm avocado
2 spring onions
Scrap of garlic, crushed
A little sugar
Sea salt and pepper
Olive oil

Cut a small cross in the pointed end of the tamarillo and place it in a heat-proof bowl. Cover with freshly boiled water and retrieve after 1 minute. Peel then dice the flesh – seeds and all. Peel, deseed and dice the avocado and chop the spring onions as finely as your inclination permits. Gently toss with the garlic in a small bowl. Season to taste with a sprinkling of sugar, some salt, pepper and a drizzle of olive oil and toss again.

Susan, The Well-Seasoned Cook, is hosting a one off event called Pancakes on Parade.

Get flipping - entries close on the 6^th of July.

Simplicity and muscle

Two phrases are scrawled through the pages of my journals, wedged between recipes, sketches and ramblings. Strive for simplicity. Strive for muscle. Written in confident, looping letters, these are big ideas which haunt me in the small, quiet hours of the morning. As though the action of tracing the letters over and over will allow them to seep into daily life. But the art of reduction is as elusive as it is desirable. ‘Strive for muscle’ is a phrase borrowed from Francine Du Plessix Gray, found when rifling one holiday among the pages of The Writing Life. Wrangling words, dancing with language – the ‘muscle’ or strength, simplicity if you will, of which Gray speaks is worth striving for. An idea linguistically stripped back to its essence, one that inevitably spills into other areas of thinking. Simplicity. Muscle. Both require courage.

Harmony, mindfulness. Lately these have taken a grip on my thinking, edging, as we are, toward the introspective darker days of winter. It’s all too easy to be swept up by the confusion of bells and whistles in the kitchen; to be seduced by long lists of the exotic, the obscure. Time to step back. Time to breathe.

Simplicity in the kitchen is about developing intuition and confidence. Listening to the language your ingredients are speaking. How else will they shine? It’s about taking pleasure in small things, like running your fingers through the verdant pots of parsley, beads of water showering your good shoes in the process. Or sipping green tea in the afternoon and watching chickpeas slowly, very slowly, swell in a dish of cold, clear water. Simplicity is washing the dishes by hand because the dishwasher is, sadly, far too complicated. And simplicity is having the courage to place a bowl of homemade smoky eggplant puree on the table with some buttery, slow-cooked chickpeas and happily call it Dinner.

Drifting back, nose first, to the musky fug of chickpeas and bay quietly simmering in the oven, I know instantly what is needed. A bowl of herbal, fresh, flavour-lifting persillade to cut through that richness. Simple. Muscular. We ate in contented silence and both agreed it a meal fit for company. Hunks of crusty bread, or soft fresh pita, optional.

Persillade
Simplicity is persillade. Parsley, from the garden if you’re lucky, washed and carefully dried, pine nuts from the pantry and a clove, maybe two, of garlic. The zest of a lemon sometimes goes in depending on the sort of lift a dish needs, but essentially this is an intuitive thing. A very worthy, but vastly different, substitute for parmesan cheese.

Palmful of pine nuts
1 clove of garlic, peeled
2-3 large handfuls of parsley leaves, washed and well dried

Toast the pine nuts to a pale shade of gold in a heavy based frying pan. Cool on a plate. Chop the garlic roughly, then chop everything together, running your knife back and forth, over and over, until it’s all quite fine.

Smoky eggplant puree
Not quite the classic Babaganoush, this is adapted from Stephanie Alexander’s simple, delicious recipe. Her suggestion to serve with a separate bowl of sour cream into which you have stirred some finely chopped fresh ginger and another, smaller, bowl of sliced hot green chillies is Highly Recommended.

3-4 eggplants
Olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
Sea salt
2 lemons, juiced
Tahini, to taste

Preheat the oven to 180 C.

Trim and quarter the eggplants lengthways. Nestle them in a single layer in a large baking dish and drizzle with a little olive oil, just enough to lubricate the pan. Roast, turning once, for 40-45 minutes, until the wedges are cooked all the way though. Cool, then peel away and discard the skins. Place the softened eggplant flesh in a colander and press down with the back of a spoon to expel as much liquid as possible.

Puree the eggplant with the garlic, a little salt, the lemon juice and a tablespoon, to begin with, of tahini. Whiz to a puree, adding a little more tahini if you like. Serve topped with a thread of extra
virgin olive oil.

Gum blossom.

Photographed while watching Oscar play football, I'm rather sorry to say, badly.

Poor lad...

Paella

Friday dinner is my favorite meal of the entire week. It’s the night when I decide what to cook over a cup of tea at breakfast, organize my morning around the purchasing and preparing of ingredients and an afternoon of walking the dog for two hours to get up an appetite (how else can I justify all that dessert?). Indulgent life, eh? Lucky me... There is something I quite like about the idea of Shabbat, though, being neither religious or Jewish, I can claim no real connection with the ceremony itself or the traditions. I just don’t believe. What I do enjoy is the spirit of a quiet Friday night spent with the Artist, at home, indulging in food and conversation. If the Actor and the Musician are here, it will be a little more traditional (they are Jewish, but of the very liberal kind), with candles and a prayer; if friends are over for dinner, it’s a huge food festival. It is always at home, and always a rich and complex meal. But most importantly it is about sharing a meal with people you love – the only thing missing is, of course, my own family and friends from Sydney.

This meal is vegan. Millet is something I do not get excited about, despite its healthful reputation – chock full ‘o vitamin B, low in carbohydrates and has goodly amounts of amino acids – and have struggled with getting into my diet at times. For me, first and foremost, a meal must be delicious and every ingredient must be able to justify its own presence. It is often suggested as a substitute for mashed potatoes. God, how revolting! Though I have worried about calling this dish ‘paella’, it does in fact describe the lovely texture of the meal perfectly. Just don’t tell anyone it’s birdseed.

The Chermoula, made freshly whilst the paella cooks, turns the dish a little southward to Morocco. It is unashamedly nicked from the wonderful Nadine Abensur. Please don’t compromise on the olive oil as it is integral to the flavours going on here. By the way, the Musician (the younger step son) asked if it could become a regular mid-week meal. A little victory for me! It’s unthinkably easy to make. Serves 4, but leftovers are good, if not as wonderfully fresh, the next day.

Chickpea and millet paella with saffron and tomatoes – serves 4

1 large pinch of saffron
2½ tablespoons of olive oil
1 cup of millet, rinsed in a sieve
1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 clove of garlic, peeled and finely chopped
1 tin of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 tin of tomatoes
1 tablespoon of smoked paprika
Sea salt
1 teaspoon of tamari
2½ cups of boiling water

Grind the saffron to a powder in a small mortar and pestle, then add 1 tablespoon of boiling water and leave to infuse.

Heat 1½ tablespoons of the olive oil in a very large lidded frying pan, add the millet and cook over a medium heat until the grains begin to colour, 4 to 5 minutes. Scrape the millet into a bowl and return the pan to the heat. Add the remaining oil to the pan and gently fry the onion and garlic over a medium heat for about 5 minutes – it should be just coloured and smell nutty.

Reduce the heat to low and add the saffron, millet, chickpeas, tomatoes and paprika. Stir, then add a pinch of salt, the tamari and the boiling water. Cover with a lid and cook until the liquid is absorbed and the millet is cooked (about 35 minutes). If it still tastes a little raw, add another ¼ cup of boiling water and cook until ready.

Serve with Chermoula (see below).

Chermoula
Makes heaps, but keeps well and is impossible to make less.

1 large bunch of coriander, tough stalks removed
1 large bunch of parsley, tough stalks removed
6 cloves of garlic, peeled and very finely chopped
2 tablespoons of ground cumin
1 tablespoon of smoked paprika
1 chilli, finely chopped
Juice of 1 lemon
1 cup of olive oil

Whiz all the ingredients except for the oil together in a food processor until it resembles a paste. Add the oil slowly with the motor running. Or, you can chop all of the ingredients by hand, very finely, and mix the oil in with a fork. Store leftovers in a tightly-sealed jar in the fridge, covered with a film of olive oil to keep it all fresh.

Pressured cook?

I finally bought a pressure cooker after reading the legume section of Deborah Madison’s magnificent Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone’ and, after a couple of uses, declared it to be the best investment I had made for some time (both the book and the pressure cooker). Beans and chickpeas, softly, perfectly cooked in less than 30 minutes was unheard of despite endless attempts to get things right. The next step was, of course, to buy ‘Great Vegetarian Cooking under Pressure’ by Lorna J. Sass (love that J.). She writes precisely and passionately about food that is as quick to make as it is fuss-free. Mid-week stuff I suppose. I am always suspicious of people who suggest that risotto making is a long and boring process - get yourself a glass of wine and some music if you can’'t find a friend to keep you company - so it seems a little excessive in an oddly ironic way to cook risotto (as she does) in less than 5 minutes, though I don’t doubt it tastes fabulous. Where the book is a winner is with recipes traditionally revolving around long cooking times (read legumes and whole grains). It is here that this book shines.

Last night I made the Thai chickpea dish that Lorna J. says friends rave about. It was an absolutely luscious dish with coconut milk and mild curry spicing. And it was utterly easy, so is the perfect sort of food to cook mid-week. Not being content to leave things alone, I think that next time I would change things a little. A few golden shallots or 1 small onion, peeled, finely chopped and browned firstly would give it more depth. A knob of fresh ginger, finely grated would be an excellent addition as would lemongrass, bashed with the back of a knife and retrieved later. A couple of kaffir lime leaves would finish things off nicely. And I used Thai basil as I live in Australia and South East Asian foods are so readily available here.

A few weeks ago my mum and I attended a cooking class with one of my favourite writers Nadine Abensur. During the class Nadine mentioned that as Middle Eastern cooks (Claudia Roden among them) use tinned chickpeas, she had no problem with them either. And if they are good enough for her, they are good enough for everyone else too. So here is my non-pressure cooker version of the Thai chickpea dish, though the pressure cooker version is really fantastic. Just try to get organic ones - I know I harp on about this, but it’s so important to look after your body and chemically-enhanced brands may be cheaper, but do you really want all that crap flowing through you?

Un-pressured Thai Chickpeas - Serves 2-3

1 tin of organic chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and very finely chopped
1 thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger, grated or finely chopped
1 lemongrass stalk, smashed with a knife
2 kaffir lime leaves, optional
1 teaspoon of ground cumin
2 teaspoons of ground coriander
½ bunch of fresh coriander, roughly chopped
1 fist-sized potato, peeled and cut into 1 cm pieces (they need to be small)
1 tin of organic tomatoes (drained of their juices)
1 tin of coconut milk
1-2 tablespoons of soy sauce or tamari to taste
Thai basil to garnish (or Italian)
Plain white rice to serve

Heat the oil in a large saucepan over a medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring well for about 5 minutes, or until starting to become golden. Add the garlic and ginger, stir for another minute then chuck in everything from the lemongrass through to the ground coriander. Stir for another minute or so and add the drained chickpeas, fresh coriander and potatoes.

Next add the drained tomatoes and coconut milk, then fill the (now empty coconut milk) tin with water, swish it around to catch all the cream and add to the saucepan. Taste as you go when adding the soy - I like quite a salty flavour you may not. Bring to the boil, then lower the heat and partially cover with a lid. Simmer away merrily for 40-45 minutes, stirring occasionally. Retrieve the lemongrass stalk and the lime leaves before serving over white rice. Sprinkle over chopped basil (either kind is fine). Really, really yum and really, really soothing.

Chickpeas. Why are they so damn hard to cook?

I have just discovered the single best way to cook chickpeas from dried after so many failures. It came, as a suggestion in the margin, from Jude Blereau's book Wholefood. It is, in fact a revelation. Better even than Anna Del Conte's method which I thought was pretty good anyway. Nigella Lawson had recommended Anna's way in the encyclopedic and very sexy How to Eat. But still the meltingly tender and nutty chickpeas I imagined myself cooking elluded me. They were either bullets or a mush.

This way is time consuming, but little of the work involves you standing around worrying over the pot. The texture is wonderful, the chickpeas are perfectly in tact and almost all the work is done by the oven. So simple - and all you need is a bit of forethought and patience:

Cover your desired amount of chickpeas in plenty of clean, cold water. To this add 2 teaspoons of yoghurt and mix well. Leave to soak for at least 24 hours, preferably 36.

Preheat the oven to 160 C. Drain the chickpeas and put into a flameproof casserole dish (I use an oval Le Creuset pot), cover with fresh, cold water and bring to the boil. Boil hard for five minutes. Drain, rinse well and place the chickpeas back into the rinsed out casserole dish and cover with cold fresh water to cover by 10 cms. Add 3 bay leaves, 3 peeled cloves of garlic, a small piece of kombu (this makes the beans more digestible and helps to prevent any 'nasty' side-effects). Bring to the boil gently, skimming off any scum that rises to the surface. Put the lid on, take off the flame and cook in the oven for anywhere between 5 and 8 hours.

This seems like a long time, and it is, but the results are worth the effort, though as I've said earlier, this isn't really going to tire you out. You may need to top up with boiling water from time to time, so start checking after 4 hours.

Better and far more nutritious than tinned, and much better than disintegrating into the dish!

Socca

And no, I haven't misspelt the game you play with a round ball! Socca is a peasant street food, a chickpea 'pancake' served in Nice and in Liguria and apparently it is hotly debated between the two as to which city is the authentic home. No matter - it is a lovely and incredibly easy thing to make, less like a pancake and more like a pizza, easier than an omelette and better on your digestive system to boot. Perfect gluten-free food.

Socca
You'll need a springform cake tin of approx. 25cm

Serves 2, but is great the next day for lunch.

1 1/4 cups of chickpea flour (also known as besan flour - get it from a good healthfood shop)

1/4 tsp of sea salt

1 1/4 cups of water

1/4 cup of olive oil, plus another 2 tablespoons extra

3 onions, peeled, halved and sliced into thin half moons

2 tblsps of mirin (from healthfood shops or Asian grocers)

Sift the flour into a bowl, add the salt and gradually add the water, whisking all the time. Whisk in the olive oil and leave for one hour at room temperature. You can in fact make this batter before you go to work, leave it in the fridge and cook it when you get home - even easier! It will keep in the fridge for 3 days.

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Brush the springform pan with 1 tablespoon of the extra oil and pour in the batter. Fry the onions gently in the remaining 1 tablespoon of extra oil for 10-15 minutes or until they golden. When golden add the mirin and gently cook for another 10-15 minutes. At this stage, put the Socca in to the oven for 15 minutes, remove and top with the now caramelised onions and bake for another 5-10 minutes or until the top is golden and set.

You can add anything you like to the topping - herbs, chopped tomato, some roasted capsicum. Even soft, crumbled goats cheese if you like. Or with no topping at all, just drizzle with olive oil and heaps of pepper.