It was another cold and rainy Sunday on the North West Coast of England, and after a day of painting ceilings and crawling round the garage (thank you Ellie for helping!) I was in the mood for comfort foods, which I approached with very little plan, the pancakes were originally going to be a flatbread but I changed my mind partway through! These are sleepy flavours, I’d go as far to say sitting under a blanket with a hot water bottle flavours! Ooh now there’s a plan …
The complete dish
What do we need…
200g in total of a mix of carrot, celery, and onion.
150g yellow split peas
A stock cube
500ml boiling water
100g buckwheat flour
5g. Baking powder
1tsp caraway seeds
160ml cold water
Plain soya yogurt
coriander
Start off by chopping up the carrot, celery and onion finely and getting them in a medium pan with a spray of oil. I haven’t specified how much of each but for me it was half a carrot, half an onion and a stick of celery. They will take 5 to 10 minutes to turn translucent but not brown, as the picture below.
Translucent not burnt!
While they are cooking wash the split peas well, in a sieve, until the water coming off them is clear.
Add the split peas, boiling water and stock to the veg and bring to a simmer, cover with a lid and cook for about 25 minutes until the split peas have softened but still have some chew to them.
Whilst the mixture is cooking, let’s make the pancake batter, it’s so simple, put the buckwheat flour, baking powder and caraway with a pinch of salt and mix together, pour in the cold water and whisk to make a thick batter.
Warm up a frying pan and spray with oil ( this only needs to be done once) pour tablespoon sized dollops of batter into the pan. Turn the pancakes over when the bubbles that form on the top have popped and the top looks firm.
The stages of pancake cooking
To make the dressing, add some finely chopped coriander, and a pinch of salt to the soya yogurt, stir well, and leave it to sit for 10 minutes.
By now our split peas should be about done, the next step is completely optional but it does add to the comfort feeling! Take half of the lentil mixture out of the pan and blitz with a blender/food processor then stir it through the rest.
Half and half!
Plate up in a fancy fashion then use the pancakes to shovel up the split peas!
Soon to be an ex-pancake, note grey paint on fingernail!
by A
veganbungalow 