Pikelets

Pikelets are traditional English pancakes made with a yeasted batter. They are similar to crumpets, the main difference being that crumpets are cooked by pouring the batter into a ring to keep it from spreading, so they tend to be smaller in diameter but a lot thicker.

Elizabeth David, in English Bread and Yeast Cookery, recommends a batter made by increasing the milk in her crumpet batter from 550ml to 700ml (for 450g flour). Many recipes for crumpets call for bicarbonate of soda, dissolved in a little warm water, to be whisked through the batter about 30 minutes before cooking. This reacts with the acidic batter to act as an additional leavening agent, helping to give crumpets their distinctive honeycombed texture. David suggests omitting this step when making pikelets. Andrew Whitley, in Bread Matters, goes further and recommends against bicarbonate of soda even in crumpet batter, saying "...it is unnecessary and can give a slightly soapy flavour to the product." Whitley's recipe uses his ciabatta dough made with 50g extra water. Both he and David recommend a 50/50 mix of strong white flour and plain flour, as strong American wheat will produce too strong a gluten network, giving "...a tight, bound result with the texture of carpet underlay" (Whitley).

The following recipe is based on one we used at Ashburton Cookery School, which is basically a half quantity of the recipe from English Bread and Yeast Cookery. You might want to add 1 to 2 tsp sugar for a slightly faster rise and, if you follow Whitley's advice, omit the bicarbonate of soda.

Pikelets (makes at least a dozen)

• 115g strong white flour
• 110g plain flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp oil
• 300ml milk
• 10g fresh yeast or 1/4 tsp fast-action dried yeast
• 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 60ml warm water

1. Whisk together the milk, oil and salt. Sift the flours on top and sprinkle over the dried yeast, or gently rub in the fresh. Whisk until well combined.
2. Cover with cling film and leave to rest for 1 to 2 hours. (If you want them for breakfast, you can make the batter the night before and refrigerate at this stage.)
3. [Optional] Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in the warm water and whisk into the batter. Leave to prove for a further 30 minutes.
4. Warm a non-stick pan over a medium heat. Spoon in a ladelful of batter and cook gently until it forms a skin with lots of little holes. Turn over and cook the other side until lightly browned. Cool on a wire rack while you cook the rest of the batch.
5. Serve warm with a generous knob of butter.

Great British Waste Menu

In an interesting twist on the Great British Menu, four of the country's top chefs compete to cook food that would normally be thrown away. This program does a great job of showing just how much food we waste in this country: vegetables ploughed back into the ground because they don't meet supermarket standards; fruit and vegetables fed to pigs because of minor blemishes; unfashionable offal sent to the dog food factory; perfectly good food that has past its sell-by date salvaged from supermarket bins and the back our own fridges.

Angela Hartnett, Richard Corrigan, Matt Tebbutt and Simon Rimmer turn this 'waste' food into a fantastic banquet for 60 VIP guests. Although it's a competition and somebody has to lose,  not one of them turns out a dud dish.  See for yourself what they came up with and get some ideas on how to use up your own food leftovers - available on BBC iPlayer until September 1st.

Pancakes, bacon, maple syrup

The bread won't be ready for the oven until this evening, giving me the perfect excuse to make pancakes for breakfast. These pancakes are based on a recipe from Michael Ruhlman's "Ratio", a book that focuses on the fundamental ratios of cooking. The ratio for pancakes is 2 parts liquid : 1 part egg : 1/2 part butter : 2 parts flour. The great thing about working with ratios is that you can vary the recipe to suit your taste. Ruhlman suggests replacing half of the liquid with buttermilk or home-made yoghurt, or replacing part of the flour with ground cereals or grains for a different texture. I kept things simple, using milk and plain white flour. A raising agent (baking powder) makes for lighter pancakes, and I added sugar and vanilla for flavour. A medium egg weighs about 55g, which gives the following recipe:

Breakfast pancakes

• 1 medium egg
• 110g milk
• 28g butter
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 110g plain flour
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• pinch salt

Melt the butter and whisk together with the milk, egg, and vanilla extract. Sift in the dry ingredients and whisk until just combined. Heat a shallow pan over medium heat, and spoon a ladleful of the mixture into the centre (the above recipe makes 4 good-sized pancakes). Turn the pancake when bubbles start to appear on the surface and cook the other side until evenly browned. Transfer to a warm oven while you cook the rest of the batch.

I used to cook pancakes on a cast-iron griddle smeared lightly with butter or lard, but I've found I get better results cooking in a non-stick aluminium pan with no fat. There's an interesting article over at Cooking Issues comparing the conductivity of cast iron with aluminium pans, where they demonstrate that an aluminium pan heats more evenly, with fewer hot spots. The idea for cooking without fat came from O'Reilly's "Cooking for Geeks": if you have too much fat in the pan, the pools of fat will keep the pancakes from contacting the hot surface and browning evenly. With a good non-stick pan, you can get by with no fat at all - I tried it this morning and this worked a treat.

Beetroot curry

Not the first thing you'd think of doing with beetroot, but tasty all the same: Riverford's beetroot curry. I deviated from the recipe a bit, bulking it out with some potatoes, using tinned tomatoes rather than fresh, lemon juice rather than lime, and 400ml coconut milk (what else do you do with the other 300ml from the can?). I added the coconut milk at the same time as the tomatoes and let it reduce gently while the vegetables cooked, making for a much richer sauce than the original recipe. The beetroot gives this curry a sweet edge, so it needs the acid from the citrus to compensate. I tasted the fresh chilli before adding it to the pan: it almost blew my head off, so I just put in one. But it reduced in potency as it cooked, so I ended up adding the other one and some hot chilli powder before I was done. Acidity and heat are very much personal tastes, so best to add a little at a time and taste as you go.

Courgette tart

The first of the season's leeks arrived in the Riverford box this week, and I planned to make a leek tart. I even ordered cream and eggs with this is mind, but thinking about cream and eggs gave me a craving for crème brulée. We're also right in the middle of the English courgette season, and I was looking for something different to do with this week's courgettes. Leiths Baking Bible came to the rescue with this courgette tart.

The filling is made from a roux-based cheese sauce enriched with an egg yolk and lightened with the stiffly beaten white - a denser than usual cheese souflée. This is topped with sliced courgettes sautéed in butter with garlic and lemon zest, then breadcrumbs and grated cheese before being baked in the oven. It looks a bit untidy, but tastes great. Better still, it left me with the cream and plenty of eggs to make crème brulée, which has just come out of the oven.

Confit chicken pasty

I managed to stretch a single confit chicken leg and thigh to three meals by making these pasties. The filling is made from lightly sautéed onions, garlic, and courgettes, chopped tomatoes, and shredded confit chicken. The pastry is a basic shortcrust made with a mixture of butter and lard. Delicious served hot or at room temperature.