I absolutely love pancakes so Pancake Day is one of my favourite traditions. Usually I cook big fluffy American-style pancakes (always using this recipe from Jamie Oliver) but last night I decided to try Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s sweet potato pancakes from last weekend’s Guardian magazine. These are not healthy. But they are amaaaazing!

You can find the recipe here and I’ve handily pasted it below. All credit to Hugh (and those are his pancakes in the picture – not mine!):

Sweet potato pancakes

A delicious way to start the day. To make a more indulgent weekend breakfast, add a few rashers of crisp bacon. Makes about 12 pancakes.

180g plain flour
3 tsp baking powder
½ tsp grated nutmeg
½ tsp ground ginger
¼ tsp salt
300g cooked sweet potato, mashed
2 eggs, lightly beaten
60g butter, melted and cooled slightly, plus a little more for frying
Butter, honey and toasted walnuts (optional; bake a handful or two of shelled nuts at 180C/350F/gas mark 4 for six to eight minutes), for serving

Sift the flour, baking powder, nutmeg, ginger and salt into a bowl. Beat together the sweet potato, eggs and butter in a separate bowl, then fold in the flour mixture, stirring just until combined – the batter will be quite stiff. Heat a frying pan over a medium-high heat and add a small knob of butter. Rub off any excess with a wad of kitchen paper. Drop the mixture into the pan in large tablespoonfuls, pressing them down gently with the back of the spoon to form a nice round. Fry for about four minutes a side, until browned on both sides. Serve spread with butter, trickled with honey and with the toasted walnuts scattered on top, if you’re using them.

MY COOK’S NOTES:

1. I peeled and cut the sweet potato into inch-size chunks and boiled it before mashing it – I think this is the fastest way.

2. If you can get your hands on good maple syrup, the kind they are so proud of in Canada, it’s even nicer on these pancakes than honey.

3. The batter is super-thick so I kept playing with the temperature – it was tricky to get them not to cook too fast on the outside and not all the way through.

4. He says the recipe makes 12 pancakes. I only made seven. 12 would have been very small pancakes. Plan accordingly for the size of the group you are feeding.

5. I didn’t serve with nuts but I most definitely did serve with crisp, streaky bacon. Mmmm!

I’m giving away a copy of Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals over here. Go enter!

On Thursday we tried our third recipe from Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals, meatball sandwiches with pickled cabbage, chopped salad and banana ice cream. I don’t know if I was just tired because it was almost the end of the week but I just couldn’t make myself work quickly. I also let E help me the whole time because it’s nicer having him in the kitchen with me. We clocked in around 40 minutes.

I have to say I was a bit disappointed with this meal. The meatballs were nice, even though I made a mistake and they were falling apart, and the combination of meatballs, pancetta, jarlsberg cheese and olive oil on ciabatta was gorgeous, but I wasn’t a very big fan of the pickled cabbage. And that’s not because I don’t like red cabbage, for the record. The chopped salad was fine, but the banana “ice cream” was a miss. It was made of frozen bananas, plain yogurt and honey (which actually tasted really nice on it’s own) but then you’re supposed to coat balls of the “ice cream” in chopped coconut and that was messy, awkward and took forever. Then you froze it again. It was a bit odd.

Based on the three recipes I’ve tried from this book, and it’s philosophy, I’m a big fan. I learned a few new fairly quick recipes and I think they’ll only get quicker when I cook them again. And I learned how to use my liquidiser for more prep work, which is great. But once I go back to cook some of my favourite things I’ll definitely do a bit of mixing and matching rather than going strictly by the book.

For more thoughts on this cookbook, my friend A wrote a post here.

Want to win one? Visit the first post in this series!

I’m running a competition to give away a copy of Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals over here. Stop by and enter!

Last night we cooked our second meal from the book, piri piri chicken. This was NOT a 30 minute meal! It took at least 45 minutes with E helping and the kitchen looked like a bomb had gone off afterward. And I was stressed out the whole time!

I chose this recipe because we love Nando’s. I know it’s just Nando’s, but it’s good. So the thought of making Nando’s chicken at home in 30 minutes sounded amazing.

To prepare, I watched the episode in which Jamie actually cooks this meal. But that stressed me out while I was cooking because I was thinking about what he did and realising I wasn’t fast enough and it didn’t look the same. Actually I even noticed discrepancies, like he puts olive oil in the sauce in the show but not in the recipe. And my sauce came out green while his was yellow. Why??

In the end though, despite the stress and chaos, it was a great meal. It didn’t exactly taste like Nando’s, but it was yummy anyway. I think it would make sense actually to make double of this sauce and freeze or preserve some of it so you can just whip it out whenever you like and for smaller batches of chicken. I also loved the sweet potatoes with chilies, feta and coriander and the Portuguese tarts were absolutely incredible. Those will definitely be made over and over again.

This book is nice because it teaches you short cuts, like using your liquidiser or microwave to make tasty things quickly, but at the same time, he has you zesting lemons and oranges which takes me FOREVER.I’d recommend this recipe but give yourself 45 minutes to an hour to be safe. And have a glass of wine while you cook it – you’ll be less stressed out!

To enter the giveaway click here.

I’ve been given two copies of Jamie Oliver’s new cookery book, Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals, one for me and one for you! I’m really keen to give my giveaway copy to another blogger, so I can read how you get on with the book, but that’s not a requirement to enter. If you’d like to win, just let me know in the comments and tell me your favourite Jamie Oliver recipe! I’ll draw a winner on 30 November.

Now, if you read the blog you know how much I love Jamie Oliver. His site (and cookery books) are where I head first if I’m looking for a recipe. But he’s been turning out books so frequently even I had to wonder if he really had anything new to offer. And those horrible adverts in the tube with his head on a timer – he winks at you!

When I cook dinner it usually takes a lot more than 30 minutes – and since I have so many projects going on that is frustrating.  But I really want us to eat nice meals, ideally with lots of veg (the very reason I signed up for Abel & Cole). As I read the book’s introduction I started to believe it could be possible to make amazing meals in 30 minutes and maybe it would CHANGE MY LIFE! I picked three recipes to cook this week and see if I could actually do it.

The book is “revolutionary” because of the way it is structured. Jamie gives you an entire menu – usually a main, salad or side and pudding – and then walks you through every step of cooking it in the order you need to do each task. If you can’t picture that, basically it means you’ll jump from main to pudding to main to salad to main, etc. so everything finishes at the same time. It took getting used to but I like it.

The first thing I noticed was how much I’d have to buy to cook these meals. Even with several of the ingredients already in our fridge, freezer or store cupboard, we spent quite a bit at the supermarket to get everything we needed. I suppose I could have made some substitutions – and will in the future – but I stubbornly wanted to follow all of the instructions for the review! The book would benefit if menus were organised by ingredients so you can make sure you use up the various leftover bits and pieces. Shopping lists would then naturally fit in with the menus and I think that would also save time.

Last night I cooked Pregnant Jools’s Pasta with crunchy chicory & watercress salad and (what was intended to be) little frangipane tarts. I finished the pasta and salad at the buzzer (before serving) but had put the tarts in the oven about five minutes behind schedule so that meant I was late. Yes, I used a timer! The pasta was absolutely brilliant and the simple salad was nice. The tarts were a mess (but still tasty) and I think that’s because we couldn’t find the right pastry shells. One suggestion here would be to put a list of required equipment up front so you know what to have close to hand before you start.

All in all, I think I’ll use this book a lot and the first set of recipes I tried were winners. Jools’s pasta will definitely be put into the rotation! Later this week I’m aiming to cook piri-piri chicken and meatball sandwiches, so stand by for more reviews and enter in the comments if you’d like to join me in trying out the book!

That got your attention, didn’t it??

Betty Crocker and Tefal are joining forces for a special promo at John Lewis and are giving away a year’s supply (24 boxes) of Betty Crocker baking mix with every purchase from Tefal’s Airbake range. The offer is available on purchases made by 1 December while stocks last.

Here are your choices:

Receive Betty Crocker’s Devil’s Food Cake Mix when you buy AirBake round cake pan

Receive Betty Crocker’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie Mix when you buy AirBake square cake pan

Receive Betty Crocker’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix when you buy AirBake cookie sheet (medium or large)

This is the nitty gritty:

Exclusive to John Lewis stores, just one purchase gets you a year’s supply (24 packs) of baking mix. Consumers wishing to redeem the offer fill out a form on a leaflet available in store and return it along with the barcode from the packaging and a copy of your receipt before 31st December 2010 to Tefal UK – Airbake Betty Crocker, 11-49 Station Road, Langley SL3 8DR.

November. Clocks back. Dark. Tonight we broke out our slow-cooker to make a proper, bone-warming steak and guiness pie. It’s time to hibernate!

Look what’s in now: foods that are ugly but delicious – celeriac, brussels sprouts and parsnips. Oh, do I know some amazing ways to make these tasty! I will share…

Here is what else is in season this month so you can plan your menus to save money and eat deliciously. Lists come from BBC GoodFood:

Fruit
At its best: bramley apples, clementines, cranberries, dates, figs, pears and quince

Veg
At its best: beetroot, brussels sprouts, celeriac, celery, chestnuts, globe artichokes, jerusalem artichokes, kale, lamb’s lettuce, leeks, lettuce, parsnips, peas, potatoes, pumkins, salsify, swedes, sweet potatoes, swiss chard and turnips

Coming in: cauliflower

Meat
At its best: duck, goose, grouse, guinea fowl and venison

Fish
At its best: crab, mussels and oysters

It drives me absolutely mental to throw out food because we’ve let it go bad. So with this Abel & Cole service I’m running around trying to make sure we eat it all and it’s a constant struggle challenge. I think about the status of our fruit and veg a LOT.

Nearly every week we get a bunch of bananas and we try to eat them all up but every couple of weeks we’ve got two brown bananas left. E and DSD are more squeamish than me about them and won’t eat even remotely brown bananas. So I found this great recipe for banana muffins and I can nearly guarantee you’ve got everything in your house already to make it. This is nice because it feels a bit healthier than banana bread (which we all know is really cake). Probably not that healthy but easier to convince yourself it is, for what that’s worth.

This recipe is from Jill Dupliex, Saturday Kitchen

Ingredients
75g/3oz melted butter
250g/9oz self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
pinch of salt
½ tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp ground nutmeg
115g/4oz caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 large, ripe bananas
2 medium eggs
125ml/4fl oz milk
10 walnut kernels (optional) (VM NOTE: I used pecans and they were nice too)

Method
1. Heat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas 5. Melt the butter and allow to cool. Mash the bananas well. Sift the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg together in a large bowl, add caster sugar and stir through.
2. With a fork, beat together the eggs, vanilla extract, melted butter and milk in a second bowl. Add the mashed banana and stir through.
3. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and add the egg mixture, stirring roughly with a fork (don’t over mix) until it is a lumpy paste.
4. Set paper cases into the moulds, or grease the moulds well with a little extra oil or butter and spoon in the mixture until almost full. Top each one with a walnut kernel if you like.
5. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until the muffins come away from the side of the pan when touched. Rest the muffin tray on a wire rack for five minutes then remove the muffins and leave on the rack for another five minutes before serving.

(The muffins in the picture are not mine, sadly!)

We cook pizza a lot around our house because making the dough is so much fun and it feels a bit healthier. This weekend, in a bid to use up the massive supply of onions and potatoes we always seem to have (courtesy Abel & Cole) we decided to try cooking a potato pizza something like the one Helen at Food Stories wrote about recently. E met Helen at a blogging event a few months ago and I’ve been addicted to her blog ever since, but this is the first time I’ve tried any of her recipes.

Here is Helen’s pizza:

Here is ours:

The combination of my unextraordinary camera and yellow kitchen doesn’t help matters but it’s clear who is the expert.

Looks aside, the pizza turned out lovely. I think we used too thick a crust (all of my baking proportions have been off since I bought yeast in a can instead of sachets) and not enough potatoes. But on the plus side we added goat cheese which was brilliant.

We ate it with simply cooked spinach (see above). I’m sure my mother is very proud!

This is a great recipe to file away. It’s delicious and with the exception of fresh rosemary, you’ve probably got everything on hand already (and if you don’t potatoes and onions are cheap.)

It’s Autumn, it’s October, and you know what that means…pumpkin season! Even if you aren’t a fan of Halloween you can get excited about all of the brilliant things you can cook with pumpkins (the cooking kind, not the carving kind!)

I wrote about some of our pumpkin-cooking adventures in this post and I will include loads more ideas this year.

Here is what else is in season this month so you can plan your menus to save money and eat deliciously. Lists come from BBC GoodFood:

Fruit
At its best: bramley apples, cranberries, figs, pears, plums, quince and tomatoes

Coming in: clementines and dates

Veg
At its best: aubergines, beetroot, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cavalo nero, celeriac, celery, chestnuts, garlic, globe artichokes, kale, lamb’s lettuce, leeks, lettuce, parsnips, peas, peppers, potatoes, pumkins, salsify, swedes, sweet potatoes, swiss chard and turnips

Coming in: jerusalem artichokes

Meat
At its best: autumn lamb, duck, goose, grouse, guinea fowl and venison

Fish
At its best: crab, mussels, oysters and salmon

The Resourceful Cook is a new meal-planning website and I’ve been meaning to check out the site for a while now. I just used the site’s calculator to find out how much it can save me and it estimated £1117 by avoiding waste and controlling costs. Wow!

I’ve written about meal planning sites before, but what I love about The Resourceful Cook is how customisable and detailed it is. Even if  you don’t want to fully commit to a meal planner, I can see how it could really make your life easier (and save you money!) Plus just reading it makes me hungry and excited to cook.

You choose your family size (one, two or four), what type of pantry you keep (basic, typical or cook’s) and the supermarket you frequent. Then choose from a range of menu plans, from home take-aways (fish & chips!) to Mediterranean medley (king prawn paella) to low cal and great value options. I chose great value and narrowed it down to four meals for the week that we’d cook in. The groceries would cost me £17, according to the site. You then have the option of adding more things to your list (biscuits? toilet roll?) before finalising and creating a printable version.

There are other options too. Really busy? Pick a quick shop menu and you’ll instantly get a shopping list for three meals. You can also plan dinner parties for up to eight using the site.

Meal plans only ever use fresh ingredients in amounts that match the pack sizes available in the shops. According to the site, that means no waste, ever. Plus you get a price per person for ever recipe, which I love. I’m assuming they base that on where I indicated I shop most but I’m not sure. According to the company, prices are based on an average between a range of typical supermarkets but soon they will have it updated automatically according to specific supermarkets.

I haven’t cooked anything yet, but I’m impressed. If it could magically base the menus around what’s on sale at the supermarket  plus what I’ve got coming in my Abel & Cole box it would be even better, but you can’t have everything!! I recommend The Resourceful Cook a look.