Thursday 12 February 2015

Green Pancakes with Lime Butter

In the spirit of all things Fritter way back in December we chose three very different fitter recipes. Jacquie was a good girl and posted hers ages ago. Finally, I am reporting back…

I invited my common law father-in-law, Dave for lunch one dreary Wednesday. I hoped to wow him with these spinachy treats made all the more cheffy-sounding with the addition of lime butter. These are a savoury, gourmet version of a stack of American pancakes with maple syrup.

The lime butter is quite easy, to put together, except our studio is so cold that the butter that I left out overnight was no softer than the butter in the fridge. An easy way to make flavoured butters with butter that you forgot to leave out to soften is to grate the required amount of butter with a fine grater such as one for Parmesan cheese. Microplane does a most excellent one. The lime juice and zest and the chilli flakes add a lovely piquancy to this butter that is great to use for other dishes, to sauté vegetables in or, as my pal Yotam suggests, smeared on a baked sweet potato. Yum.



I was running late (surprise, surprise) so there was no time to wait for the spinach to cool after it was wilted. I almost scalded my hands squeezing out the liquid. But this is a very important step otherwise the pancake mixture will be runny and less flavourful. Perhaps I would wilt the spinach first so that it has a chance to cool while I muck around with the lime butter.

The most onerous part of the recipes is whisking the egg white and gently folding it into the batter so that the pancakes are light and fluffy. No hardship at all.





I fried the pancakes on my tawa, designed for making chapatis and perfect for pancakes.  I followed the suggestion of serving them with grilled halloumi. I also made a delicious salad of roasted cubes of butternut squash with toasted pumpkin seeds, and pomegranate on watercress, rocket and mâche with an olive oil and pomegranate molasses dressing as well as olives, tomato chutney and bread. It was a lovely meal all washed down with homemade elderflower cordial. (I made 24 litres this summer – my best batch ever!)


These pancakes were nice enough, light and fluffy and not too naughty (until you add the lime butter!) Not sure how easy they would be to veganise as the eggs are central to the recipe. But I would not bother as the vegan sweet potato cakes are soooo delicious even without smothering them in the yoghurt sauce. The leek fritters are ace too. Perhaps my green pancakes could be vepped up with a bit of goat’s cheese…