Buttermilk Pancakes with Sausage Gravy

This may not look like the most appetizing dish but it tastes amazing. When other people are eating a full English, I never know what to have - I don't like baked beans, or mushrooms, or fried eggs, and am not really that fussed about bacon - which usually leaves me with a sausage sandwich. Sometimes if I am making a cooked breakfast for my boyfriend I want something a bit more substantial, but sausage and toast by itself is a bit dry. I recently came across a recipe for buttermilk pancakes with sausage gravy from The No Waste Meal Planner by Becky Thorn and it's now my go-to recipe when other people want a full English.

Becky's recipe includes sweetcorn in her pancakes but I don't like sweetcorn (I know you're wondering if there is anything I do like!); you could also serve this with fried potatoes or ready-made potato cakes. The sausage gravy is essentially sausage meat in a milky white sauce; it really reminds me of nursery-style comfort food and is just the thing when you've had a few too many the night before!

You need:

100g sausage meat, either from a pack of sausage meat or sausages broken up
half an onion, chopped
25g butter
40g plain flour
400ml milk
salt pepper
freshly ground nutmeg

for the pancakes
3 eggs
150ml buttermilk
180g plain flour
1.5 tsp baking powder

Crumble the sausage meat or break up the sausages and fry along with the onion until browned.

In a small saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour and cook for a couple of minutes then add the milk and stir until smooth. Add the sausage and onion and seasoning and simmer until the sauce has thickened.

It doesn't look particularly appetizing at this stage, but trust me!

To make the pancakes, add a little of the buttermilk to the flour and mix to a paste then add the rest of the buttermilk and the eggs, and the baking powder and mix well.

Heat a frying pan and pour in the batter to make pancakes - you will get about 4 out of this quantity, though I made mine quite thick.

For the other half: buttermilk pancakes, sausage patties (made from the same packet of sausage meat) and baked beans.

For me, buttermilk pancakes and sausage gravy - delicious!

Buttermilk Fried Chicken

When I was in America last year I had the most amazing buttermilk fried chicken, so I wanted to try to make  something similar. I used this recipe from BBC Good Food which turned out pretty well, but it wasn't anywhere near as nice as the meal I ate in Arizona!

You need:

chicken thighs and drumsticks

enough buttermilk to cover - probably one 284ml carton is enough for 2-4 people

1 onion

100g plain flour

1 tsp paprika

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

1/2 tsp dried thyme or 1 tbsp fresh thyme

Slice the onion, place in a bowl with the chicken pieces, season and pour over the buttermilk. Leave overnight.

 

Mix the spices - I used fresh thyme

Mix with the flour

Dip the chicken pieces in the spiced flour mixture

Heat 2cm of oil in a deep pan and when hot fry the chicken in batches until golden brown

Finish cooking in a preheated oven at 190C for about 20-25 minutes until the chicken is cooked through

Definitely a tasty way to serve chicken!

Giant Cookie - Nigella's Buttermilk Birthday Cake

This month's Random Recipes asked us "if you had ten seconds to grab one book, what would it be?". That's cookery books of course - the idea being if you were leaving your house in a hurry and could only take one recipe book with you, which would it be?

I knew right away - even though I have over 100 cookery books, one in particular stands out: Nigella's How To Be a Domestic Goddess. Not because it's my favourite or even the one that I use most, but because it was one of the first cookery books that I owned. I was given it as a birthday present by my friends, who all clubbed together (£20 was a lot of money to a student back then!) and presented it to me on what I think was my 20th birthday. It's a huge book with a lot of recipes, and I like the idea that they are all themed around being a 'domestic goddess' - so mainly cakes but with biscuits and savoury pies and the like. My favourite chapter is called 'the chocolate cake hall of fame'. I think that while I was swamped in academia I rather liked the idea of being a domestic goddess at the same time- even though my entire cooking facilities consisted of a double hot plate (provided by the university) and a mini oven (provided by my grandmother who used to have it in her camper van- so I was the only one in my building with an oven!). So I guess the other reason this cookery book would be the one I grabbed in a hurry is because of the memories that are attached to it.

So in accordance with the Random Recipes challenge, I opened the book at random and decided I would make whatever was on that page: it was the buttermilk birthday cake on page 210.

I can't find the recipe on Nigella's official website but there is a version of it - with small differences - on the Guardian website here. 

Preheat the oven to 180C. Cream the butter and the sugar together.

Mix in the eggs, then the flour, bicarb of soda and salt (the recipe I used didn't include the lemon).

Finally fold in the buttermilk and vanilla

In the book, Nigella talks about using different moulds like Barbie or a train - this is after all meant to be a children's birthday cake. I had a giant cookie mould I'd bought ages ago and never used, and thought this would be a good opportunity.

There are two silicon moulds of equal size, with a flower pattern and 'cookie' word in the middle. The moulds are very strong and robust and worked really well.

Spoon the mixture equally into the two tins and bake in the oven for about 25 minutes (the exact time will depend on the size and depth of the mould you are using).

You can see the pattern on the baked cake, though it is a little hard to read the word 'cookie'.

I mixed icing sugar with butter and some melted white chocolate to make a delicious buttercream, and used it to fill the cake.

It does look like a giant custard cream!

I'm sending this to Random Recipes, hosted by Dom at Belleau Kitchen.