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.

Home, sweet home

Our backyard, the one in which I grew up, teemed with wildlife. Backing onto bush land (Patrick White territory, no less) my father’s garden, always beautifully kept, is a haven for birds of all kinds. In a week that saw an extraordinary outpouring of emotion from the sublime (a nation’s long overdue apology) to the ridiculous, I spent most mornings patiently coaxing the Rainbow Lorikeets into eating, literally, from the palm of my hand. They sang to me then danced on the table for the camera, hanging first this way, then that. Jesters the lot of them, dressed in vivid green, red and blue.

As usual, food was central to the week away. There was Jo’s birthday dinner, a sun-soaked lunch on a central coast deck with Emma (we’ve hatched a little visual project to keep us both in check), an exquisite lunch with mum and dad and a long overdue catch-up at Red Lantern with my oldest friend. There is something about the simple – no, simple won’t do - spare elegance of Asian cuisines that cleanse more than merely the palate. Who would have imagined that fresh lemon juice mixed with roasted, ground peppercorns would make the most amazing, ever, dipping sauce?

My mother’s cooking is a dessert-lover’s dream. Her cherry sorbet was blindingly good, especially when paired with another made of ripe, juicy nectarines. A marriage of two beautiful stone fruits in each little bowl – one scoop assertive and unctuous, best attacked in small spoonfuls; the other light and pink, a tart contrast to the rich, wine-dark red. The pantry boasts six kilos of chocolate at any given time; three of the creamy, buttery white variety and three of the wickedly dark and bitter stuff. I was brought up on a passion for dessert. But somehow, working my own way around the kitchen, it seems that the sweet tooth that defines my small family has, in my case, been firmly extracted.

Is it a remnant of teenage defiance? That sheer will and determination to set oneself apart from the flock? Actually, I think it’s all the washing up. Coming back to our quiet, sparsely decorated home, the baking bug bit in an altogether unfamiliar way. Like that teenager I recall, my brand of baking is stamped, decidedly, with my own, unfussy, thang.

Chocolate thumbprint cookies – makes about 20

A revelatory one bowl wonder this recipe is and, thankfully, there’s very little washing up. Based on a recipe in Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s now legendary book, Vegan with a Vengeance, these are utterly, spectacularly, delicious.

5 tablespoons of macadamia oil (or almond, grapeseed, etc, but not olive)
5 tablespoons of soy milk (or rice, oat, etc)
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
½ teaspoon of almond extract (this adds a great, marzipan-like something)
135g (4 ½ oz) unrefined sugar
120g (4oz) of wholemeal (whole-wheat) flour
5 tablespoons of good quality cocoa powder
Good pinch of sea salt, finely crumbled
Good pinch of baking powder
Jam (fruit preserves), your favourite, to finish

Preheat the oven to 180 C (375 F). Line two baking sheets with parchment.

Mix the first 5 ingredients together in a roomy bowl with a fork. Sift the flour, cocoa powder, salt and baking powder into the wet ingredients and stir well to combine.

Place dessertspoon sized dollops of the mixture onto the baking trays, leaving a little space for expansion around each. With damp hands, roughly mould each dollop into as round a shape as you can be bothered to, then gently press to flatten very slightly.

Bake for 5 minutes, retrieve from the oven and gently make shallow thumbprint sized indentations in each cookie. Fill each hollow with half a teaspoon of jam and return to the oven for 6 minutes. Cool on their trays for 2 minutes then cool completely on a rack.

And I'm baking another batch tonight.

For the boys, you understand...