Spelt pancakes with stewed vanilla strawberries

I love Ridley road market with it's African fabrics, cheap food stalls and fishmongers. Even the sheeps' heads add a little "je ne sais quoi" to the atmosphere. This is where you come to get cheap fruit and veg in east London. Unfortunately, it's not always the best quality. Yersterday, I was walking through Ridley Road when a torrential downpour started. This wasn't your usual London drizzle, it was like  monsoon had hit us. Fortunately, it was still warm and somehow all the people caught in it - like yours truly - were in good spirits. The market stall holders were trying to get rid of all their produce as quickly as possible and pack up, so I got 2 big bowls - one of cherries, one of strawberries -for £1.50. The cherries were delicious, but the strawberries were a bit squashed by the time I got them home. I ate the solid strawberries whilst contemplating what I could do with all the squashed ones. Half of the squashed ones went into a healthy shake with yoghurt, almond milk, maple syrup and maca root. The other half were made into strawberry and vanilla sauce that went on top of spelt pancakes this Sunday morning, for brunch.

I won't lie to you, it was divine. I simply  simmered the strawberries with a teaspoon of good quality vanilla essence, a tablespoon of brown sugar and 3 tablespoons of water. I won't patronise you with a detailed description of how to make pancakes because I'm sure you know. I just whizzed all the ingredients down there together and fried each ladlefull in little knobs of butter. I also added a dollop of mascapone and a drizzle of maple syrup for that American brunch feel. This will make 2 pancakes.

Ingredients

50g spelt flour

1 egg

150ml almond milk (aprox)

15g butter

Large handful strawberries, chopped in half

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

1 tablespoon brown sugar

Dollop mascapone

Maple syrup to drizzle

Nettles fried in chickpea beer batter

My garden mystifies me. Everything is in bloom and I don't know when it happened. Now the weeds are taking over and I'm not sure if I mind. I wish I knew what to do with dandelion, because I've heard it's very beneficial, but I don't feel confident with it. I get flashbacks to my childhood and being told not to lick my hands of that milky residue the dandelion flowers leave behind. They said it was poisonous. So for now the dandelion gets left alone. Nettles I am confident with however. Despite their aggressive personality, they've always held a fascination for me and I've been brought up to see them as "good". So today, while making a start on my garden, I picked some nettles, braised them in salted water, dipped them in batter, and fried them for a tasty snack.

Ingredients

12 Nettle leaves

75g chickpea flour

1/2 teaspoon garlic salt

50ml light beer

50ml sparkling water

Runny honey and sea salt to serve

Simply mix the chickpea (gram) flour with the garlic salt the whisk while adding beer and sparkling water. Use tongs to dip the nettle leaves in the batter and fry. They're ready when golden, it should take about 3min each side. Serve drizzled with honey and sprinkled with sea salt.

Caramelised pecan and red maca frozen yoghurt

As far as Januaries in London go, this one's not so bad. It's brisk but not freezing. There's wind and rain, yes, but then there are also dazzling blue skies and vivid sunsets... So whereas during your average kind of January I probably wouldn't dream of making fro-yo, this January it seems a perfectly reasonable thing to do

I made this one by grilling the crushed pecans with some coconut oil, sea salt and maple syrup for about 5min, then adding them, along with more maple syrup, and a couple of tablespoons of powdered red maca, to Greek-style bio-yoghurt. It froze in about an hour. If you have an over enthusiastic freezer like this one, remember to keep stirring every 10-15min and don't leave it in overnight. Just put it in there about 1 hour before you want to consume it. Alternatively, you may just want to eat it all in one go, since it's so healthy and so mapley, malty, more-ish

A snack: quick guacamole on rye bread with grilled cheese on top

It's just a snack, but it was so tasty I'd feel bad if I didn't share it with you

Take a piece of rye bread and toast it. Meanwhile, mash a soft avocado with some sea salt, half a red chilli and a bit of fresh, chopped coriander. I could have used my pestle and mortar for this, yet I used an ordinary fork and a chopping board. Squeeze a bit of lime in to make the mashing easier. Place the guacamole on top of the rye bread and put it on a baking tray. Grate some cheddar on top. Or another strong-tasting hard cheese. Grill until the cheese is melted and golden, then sprinkle with chilli sauce to finish. Yum!

Salmiakki: Finnish sweet'n'salty chocolates

Since going on my diet a week ago (all I'm doing is not eating sugar or processed foods really), I have had to deal with temptation in many guises. First, Petey tempts me with a Snickers late at night because I may be tired of dieting (thanks Petey), then my friend at work waves Nordic chocolates about in front of me (I actually took one, then gave it back)... but the worst by far was the charity bake sale yesterday. Everywhere I went, the bake sale followed me, finally settling right in my field of vision for the rest of the day, the multi-coloured cakes all winking at me, free now. Still, I resisted. Before going over to my friend, Astrid's, house for dinner, I actually texted and asked her to please not offer me any pudding. She very kindly made a delicious sugar-free semi-fredo instead. Yet when it came to these, I could resist no longer.

They are Finnish chocolates with salty liquorish on the inside. Salty liquorish is one of my favourite things in the world by the way. And since eating this incredible pecan pie, closely followed by salty caramel frozen yoghurt in New York, I can't get enough of those two flavours together: salty'n'sweet, sweet'n'salty: it's just the best combination and I can't believe I only truly discovered my love of it a couple of months ago. So the moral of today's blog is this: Sometimes it's worth breaking your own rules for a taste of the unknown, and if you ever go past a Finnish shop, go inside and ask for Salmiakki

Black garlic hummus (no tahini)

I should have told you about this earlier. I don't know why I didn't - the time never seemed right until now. And black garlic hummus is a dark and seductive thing - sweet yet intense, strange yet familiar,  it definitely lends itself to being kept a secret

But a secret is no fun unless it's shared, so here we are... blend the chickpeas with the lemon juice, paprika and black garlic. While they are blending, slowly add the olive oil, in a trickle. Add some sea salt too while it's blending. Keep doing this until the mixture is mostly smooth with a few cheeky chickpea bits here and there. Serve with more paprika sprinkled on top

Ingredients

Tin of chickpeas

Juice of 1 lemon

1 black garlic bulb

1 heaped teaspoon paprika

Sea salt to taste

About 1 tablespoon mild olive oil

From Lanzarote with Love

I can't say that I love Lanzarote. I find this volcanic and barren landscape oppressive

But the people are sweet. And you have to admire their perserverence when it comes to wine, because it can't be easy growing anything here. They produce wine in the region of La Geria, succeeding mainly in refreshing, mineraly whites from what I can tell

By stroke of luck, we stayed in the Papagayo region, a short trek from the most beautiful beaches on the island

And I discovered these...

They're my new favourite crisps - a cross between Polish 'Flipsy' corn snacks (like massive 'Whatsits') and buttered popcorn, yet in appealing bird-like shapes

Talking of birds, the pigeons are pretty cool here too

Gwyneth Paltrow's Kale Crisps

Without actively disliking her, I've never been a massive fan of Gwyneth Paltrow. Probably completely unfairly, I found her vaguely annoying. I think she reminded me of someone at school or something, one of those competitive, over-achieving types of girls... But all is forgiven now Gwynnie, because your kale crisps are a revelation! We were munching on these last night at our girlie Christmas get-together and we must have eaten a couple of bags of kale between us at least. They are so easy to make, and almost impossible to stop eating. And in my humble opinion, they're much tastier than crisps anyway

Take some kale, don't wash it, but do add sea salt

And olive oil according to Gwinnie, or hemp oil according to us

Place on a baking tray and stick in the oven for 12-15min at 200 degrees

Or until crispy

Pour into a bowl and munch happily while chatting and drinking mango bellinis/mulled wine/baileys on ice (or a combination of all three) with your girlfriends

Mum's "kotlet" on rye bread with pickled mushrooms for lunch

I loved having my mum come to stay last week, even though my flat is so tidy now, that I can't find a thing. Not that it's usually massively messy, I'm just quite laissez-faire while my mum's standards are very, very high. It caused a lot of stress between us when we lived together, with my mum always striving for perfection and young me striving for freedom, but I like to think that now we've learnt to love certain differences between us, and accept the other ones

A "kotlet" is something between a burger and a meatball, and my mum's ones are fantastic. It's great with mash, gravy and gherkins for dinner, but I've always prefererd them cold, cut into slices and served in an open sandwich with mustard, just like that up there. Here's the recipe for about 12 of these babies:

Ingredients

500g minced pork

500g minced beef

2 eggs

2 toast - soaked in milk for 10min then squeezed

Onion - chopped finely and fried gently until soft

1 tsp paprika (or any other spice that you like)

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

breadcrumbs

You mix all the ingredients with your hands, squeezing and mashing for about 5min. Then rinse your hands in cold water, so you can form the cutlets. You want them to have a flat shape, then you cover them with breadcrumbs and fry for 3min each side. Finally, put them all in a baking dish, cover in the oil they've been fried in and give them another 15min in the oven. Apparently, some people feel this dries them out and use the method of pouring stock over the whole lot and finishing them off on the stove, but I prefer them a bit drier myself. Probably because that's the way my mum makes them, and that always tastes the best, right?

Japanese-Polish-Russian sandwiches

So Japanese-Polish-Russian fusion - don't ever say that I don't show you anything new. I'm being fasetious, of course, normally I would never attempt something like this. It brings to mind the time we were in a chalet in the French Alps and the guy running it made us moussaka and a stir fry. My dad said "right let's see what we've got here - Greece and China. I think there's a reason why those countries are so far apart". The English families thought he was terribly rude of course, but I thought he'd made a good point. We went out for fondue and raclette after that. However, despite my bad fusion connotations, I wanted to make a Japanese style sandwich, because I saw one in my favourite-for-now cookbook, Simply Japanese, as well as this blog. And I had filling left over from my Polish Russian-style dumplings...

So, I used the technique of rolling each slice of bread until it's very, very thin (crusts off), from this recipe for Nori and Mimolette sandwiches

I think her knife's better than mine, though, because my sandwiches are nowhere near as neat! And then the filling left over from my dumpling days was a rough mixture of ricotta, boiled potato and fried onion (in butter). In terms of aesthetics, I think my sandwich needs another layer - ham perhaps; in terms of taste - it was perfect for lunch, served with a cup of instant borsht. My colleague, Matt, who had a sample, agreed that the weird experiment had, in fact, paid off

Chickpea pancakes - "la socca" from Provence

I've had one of those incredibly busy and satisfying Saturdays. I went to the doctor, did the laundry, worked on a grant application, went to an exhibition with some friends, caught up with them over a margarita, did some research at the British Library, bought a present for a mate and a lipstick pour moi (I still haven't mastered the art of buying a present for someone without buying one for myself at the same time), spent forever in Sainsbury's trying to decide what to cook this weekend (I must have looked like I was trying to pull, because a man actually approached me and started telling me about his cat - I had cat food in my basket), cleaned my kitchen and now I'm blogging. I also decided to visit Provence to eat some of their famous street food. "Flavours of Provence" (my newest library acquisition) tells me that I am now "tasting some of Provence's ancient history", and although I have never been there, I'm feeling it

It's spirit, if you like. Or just "la socca", if you don't

These chickpea pancakes are ridiculously easy to make. For 4 pancakes, you combine about 100g chickpea (gram or besan) flour, half a teaspoon of salt, some virgin olive oil, and some more sea salt and black pepper to serve. Ferguson ("Flavours of Provence") suggest a teaspoon of salt, but this was a touch too much for my palette, so I'd say start with a half, you can always make it more salty at the end. You combine the salt and flour in a bowl then start adding cold water, while whisking constantly. You need about a cup of water at a guess. The thing is, I'm like my grandma Ziuta in that I never measure ingredients and do everything by eye. What we are trying to achieve here is the consistency of a thin cream (single cream, for example). Allow to stand for 2 minutes, and check the consistency. Add more water and whisk again if you feel it's too thick. Heat some olive oil in a pan then add about 5 tablespoons of batter into the pan, making sure it spreads evenly. I did this on a medium heat. When the edges become crispy, it's ready. You never turn these pancakes over - they are supposed to be a tiny bit damp in the middle. Slide it off the frying pan, and serve with salt and black pepper. Or sugar if you prefer. These measurements are enough for two. Don't be greedy like yours truly and eat 3 soccas in one sitting. That's not the Provence way

Sugar-free maple flapjacks

I've been trying, and failing miserably, to give up processed sugar in January. I feel that I'm addicted to it, and I've come to point in my life where I'd rather not be addicted to anything. Being in my 30s has made me rather sensible it seems. Well, by comparison anyway. However, I've realized that life's a little sad without something sweet to nibble on with your tea, so I decided to experiment with some sugar alternatives last weekend

I made almond cakes with agave syrup and flapjacks with maple syrup. The almond cakes were tasty, and the agave syrup worked well, but they just seemed...(search fruitlessly for the appropriate adjective) a bit "meh" next to the incredible maple flapjacks. I clearly need to perfect that recipe. The flapjacks, on the other hand, they were something else - completely, unexpectedly glorious. I'm not just bigging myself up here, everyone that tried the maple treats has been enamoured with them and I had to promise I'd bring some more into work tomorrow. In fact, just a day after I made them, I've hardly got any left to bring, as my brother came over for dinner and took some away too. In short, a big success and I hope you try them! As usual with flapjacks, they're brilliantly easy to make

Ingredients

200g butter

1 cup maple syrup

3 cups oats

1 cup sesame seeds

1/2 cup chopped dates

First, make sure you toast the sesame seeds on a frying pan on a very low heat, stirring regularly, in order to bring out their lovely flavour. When that's done, melt the butter in another pan, and pour in the maple syrup. Add all the dry ingredients and mix well. Transfer to a buttered baking dish. Bake at around 180 degrees C until golden - about 20min. Score while still hot, it will make things easier later. Happy February!

My favourite sandwich - avocado, cheese and red pepper

God, I deserve a holiday. And perhaps even a medal. Moving house is really hard. And I hate packing. And buying is extremely stressful. I have someone moving in literally on top of me on Saturday, and  anything could still potentially go wrong with the sale, leaving me homeless. On top of all this hassle, there's been work, which has been a bit challenging of late (this is a good thing, I know, but I'm tired), and we can't forget the emotional fallout from the disastrous break up of a five year relationship... I can't wait to be just that little bit too hot all the time, to stay up too late drinking wine and listening to crickets, then sleep in, knowing I have nothing to do on any particular day except read, eat, walk and swim. That's except on Wednesday, when I have to be very aggressive with some tomatoes. Yup, we're going to La Tomatina. I am just not sure how I feel about being covered head-to-toe in tomato pulp

There's been a few blogs recently that have talked about toast and sandwiches, so I decided to join the club, and share my favourite sandwich recipe with you. This was introduced to me by my friend, Simone, who's mum invented it. Now, the original is toasted, and that version is better on ciabatta. The one up there is rye bread with avocado, garlic salt (this is non-negotiable), gouda cheese and marinated peppers. Ideal for an easy work lunch, or snack, though you will get sticky fingers so it's best eaten away from the computer!