Sleepy Sunday - Green Bean, Mushroom & Cherry Tomato Pancakes

Sleepy Sunday in my eyes is all about having a lie in and chilling NOT being jumped on at 6:00am by a dog possessed! I'll let Marco off this once as he's not been very well, although the sweet potato seems to be doing the trick, well, either that or the tablets from the vet!

So my Sleepy Sunday turned into an early rise and I was starving! A quick tour round the veg patch gave me another 100g of purple and green beans. This was definitely the last haul, although there were still a few flowers on the plants, so maybe it's not the end just yet. I decided to leave the masses of runner beans on the plants until later in the day, when I will be ready to make soup for the week ahead. Recipe will feature on Tuesday.

A quick raid of the fridge demonstrated that quite a few things were getting near their shelf life or past their best including some cherry tomatoes. I wondered what I could make with these two ingredients, then I remembered discovering the greatest love affair in food heaven, green beans and mushrooms, so now I had three ingredients.

After some deliberation I decided that I would have a go at making pancakes as I thought it fit the Sleepy Sunday theme quite well. Even as a vegetarian I didn't eat eggs, jut the thought of them turned my stomach so I haven't had pancakes for quite some time. Even oat cakes remind me of eggs and I can't eat them so this was going to be a test.

Ingredients - Serves 2
60g Flour 
10g Soya flour
10g Nutritional Yeast
450ml Almond milk
Olive Oil
100g French green/purple beans
200g Chestnut mushrooms
200g Cherry tomatoes
Handful of basil
Salt & Pepper

Method
First prepare your vegetables by topping and tailing the beans and slicing, quarter the tomatoes and chunk up your mushrooms! Turn your oven on to a low heat, so you can keep your pancakes warm as you are making them.

Put the nutritional yeast flakes in a food processor and blitz until fine. Add the two flours and give the processor another whiz to combine the ingredients. Add 400ml of the almond milk and process to make a smooth batter. Set aside while you make the filling.

Add a little olive oil to a pan and saute the beans for 3 minutes, then add the mushrooms and cook for another 3 minutes. Add the cherry tomatoes and cook until the tomatoes break down about 5 minutes, stirring regularly so the mixture doesn't stick to the pan. Add the remaining almond milk and simmer for another 2 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste and scatter with the basil leaves.

When the filling is almost done, heat a drop of olive oil in a frying pan (non stick is best) and add about 3 tablespoons of the batter. You will start to see little air bubbles in the surface of the pancake and this is when you need to flip it over and cook the other side for two minutes. Remove from the pan to an oven proof plate and pop in the oven to keep warm while you make the remainder of the pancakes, you will get 4 pancakes. Spray the pan with a little olive oil before adding the next batch of batter.

To serve, place a pancake on a plate and top with the filling, then place another pancake on top and add more filling. Enjoy.

These did still remind me of eggs but I did eat them, if I were to make them again I would add more almond milk as I think the batter was a little stodgy for my taste.

On the harvesting front, I have been a lucky girl, this week I have been given free produce too, so not only did I bag a bargain yesterday, but I have been given a bag full of lettuce from my Mums garden, cheers Mum, and I have been blessed by a visit from my gardening angel. After reading my blog and seeing that I was using tinned beans my gardening angel gave me a bag of borlotti beans from her allotment. So I am trying to create a recipe which showcases them. As I need to soak them over night I think this will be a task for next weekend! Thank you my lovely gardening angel.