WELL GOSH...

Where has the month since I last posted gone?

Well, for us it has been a crazy frenzy of packing as we have finally gotten the thumbs up for our cottage in Cornwall. It's a beautiful two bedroomed, stone built cottage circa 1780's in a teeny, tiny place just outside of St Just. To say we are excited would be the understatement of the millennium and so on the 8th January we will be spending our first night in our new home.

We've been tentatively scoping out all the organic butchers and the farmers markets and it looks like we're in luck, there happens to be an organic butchers around 10 minutes away in one direction and our local farmers market is about 10 minutes the other way from us. Of course being so far out of the way brings it's own unique problems but we can fill in the gaps online but that said, it is going to take a bit of getting used to. No more nipping down to Seewoo for Chinese ingredients or Dadoos for Indian ingredients so it's going to take some planning to keep our stocks of spices and things like Dhals up.

That aside, we have been doing some more cooking despite having to rummage through boxes we'd packed because 'hey, when are we going to get time to bake a cake before we leave?'. Oh boy were those famous last words!

Once again we've been watching the new season of River Cottage and as we had some hard pears and some odds and ends that didn't exactly make up an ideal meal Hugh had the answer in the form of home made crispy pancakes and the luscious Almond and Pear Pudding Cake.

We made a different filling for our crispy pancakes using up a slightly wilted leek, some ham scraps and some lovely cheddar cheese. It was a bit fiddly and time consuming and our pancakes were  baked instead of frying them because I'm not over keen on fried foods.

We fried off the leek in a touch of olive oil, cubed up some ham and fried that off briefly then added some milk and brought it to the boil. It was then thickened with cornflour and lots of grated cheese and left it to cool down a little.

My OH made the pancakes and once they had cooled down we set about assembling them as per the recipe but put them on a baking tray in the oven for 30 minutes instead of frying them in oil.

They were absolutely fantastic, crisp on the outside and gooey and cheesy in the centre and a great improvement on the day-glo orange, crap filled commercial branded crispy pancakes that's for sure! So, even junk food can get a makeover with a little time and patience and there's no real reason you couldn't make a batch of these and freeze them for later use. There's also so many different fillings you could use, Hughs recipe had Chicken and Sweetcorn, Smoked Pollack and Steak and Kidney... so... go wild and surprise your kids... or even yourself with how much healthier and better for you home made junk food is, ours were made with completely organic ingredients!

Should you wish to have a go, the recipe is here: Crispy Pancakes