One rolled and complete, one open to show the filling…this might be the time to add a little sweet chili sauce, possibly a little chunky salt as well…

My start point was a container of butter milk that had just reached its ‘best by’ date…I didn’t even know what buttermilk was let alone remember what we bought it for – clearly to use in something but what? And, more importantly, what to use it in now as I am always loath to hiff an unopened container of food just because it’s time is up – it just seems so wasteful…

Cyber-searching found me this at Holy Khao:

‘Gredients

• 1 cup finely chopped baby spinach (tightly packed) – washed & drained
• 1 cup buttermilk
• ½ tsp baking powder
• 1/4 – 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp chilli powder
• 1 pinch nutmeg [optional]
• 1 cup pancake mix (see below)
• ¼ cup fat free cheese (I used crumbled feta) – [optional]
• Oil/ cooking spray for cooking (we ALWAYS use butter for pan cake cooking)

For the pancake mix, I fell back (shouldn’t drink and cook, eh?) on the tried and true Edmonds recipe, found on page 129 in that classic Kiwi icon, the Edmonds Cook Book (2010):

• One cup of flour
• one egg (I used two because I can and because we have a surplus of eggs big time) – The eggs probably affect the freezability of the pan cakes – next I will try sans eggs.
• Any thing that was already listed above was left out.

Cheese is optional. Add any seasoning to adapt to your tastes.

Fillin’

I’m not really that much of a starter for sweet pan cakes but love ’em savoury…Looking at what else I needed to consume in the fridge, I grabbed:

• Half-a dozen cheery tomatoes. If you don’t have half a dozen, six will do.
• Half a dozen small fresh mushrooms.
• 1/4 medium onion.
• 4-5 decent size mint leaves.
• A decent handful of parsley – probably about a cup unchopped.
• One small carrot, topped’n’ tailed.

Bonus points

1. It has chili in it.
2. The cooked pancakes can be frozen.

Assembly

Place the filling ingredients all in the Tupperware Terminator Minigun of Kitchen Utensils and rev it up like you’re starting the mower on a cold day…

Place the blended components in a bowl and set aside.

Measure out baking soda, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and chilli powder.

Gently mix with buttermilk so it can start its leavening reaction and set aside 2 minutes. (I missed this step and so the leavening was uneven)

Stir in spinach & feta till just incorporated.

Gently stir in pancake mix till mixed and no lumps are visible. Do not overmix.

Cook 1/4 cup batter on a hot griddle till golden brown like regular pancakes.

Place a proportional dollop (amount of filling divided into number of pancakes) on each pancakes and roll into a…what else…a roll.

These passed the taste and texture test in their own right but I had them with some venison sausages because, yup, you guessed it, I had some of these in the fridge also in need of consumption…

Three pan cakes and three sausages (they’re not THAT big) certainly hit the spot and just about wiped me out. I have two left over in the fridge and will try these tonight with the same filling but with a tad of chili sauce mixed in as well…

Edit:

– Yeah Baby!!! That filling was great with a couple of tablespoons of sweet chili sauce mixed into it – next time I might try adding some chili flakes to the mix instead.

– The nagging itch at the back of my mind finally coalesced into something tangible: if I added bulgar wheat to the filling, it’d be tabbouleh – I think that itch was what nudged me towards the filling in the first place: I actually subconsciously wanted tabbouleh..