Ratatouille Stuffed Pancake/Crêpe Enchiladas

It’s pancake day in T-minus 170 hours, in other words it’s in 8 days and I intend for you, me, your neighbour’s cat and anyone else who applies, to be fully prepared.
In all honesty I’ve always been a little bit put off by the idea of savoury pancakes because occasionally I have these weird things about certain foods. I am far from a picky eater but there are just some things I can’t deal with like bread and cheese together, especially when it involves butter but I also love anything with melted cheese on and that includes bread, making sense yet? Yeah, it never does. I’m pretty open minded to re-trying things though, like that time my mum gave me liver straight out the frying pan, give me a second while I involuntary shudder at the memory, but out of everything I’ve tried on here that I was a little unsure I’d like, I think this might just be my favourite.

I’m sure the majority of you are versed in the whole savoury pancake thing but in the very slight chance that you’re not you need to try this. I never imagined melted cheese and pancakes could taste so good, but here we are, and possibly the best bit of this is the crispy ends, can I just cook a batch of pancake ends up? This is a little time consuming however it’s pretty simple and if you’re making it for a family dinner it’s a good all hands of deck kind of recipe and how can anyone turn down the prospect of pancakes?
I’m sure your neighbour’s cat will be eagerly awaiting the next pancake post.

Healthy Spaghetti Bolognese

You know when you’re a child and some things are just a certain way and you never question anything to be different. Example: both my granddads and my dad were/are really into photography so growing up my sister and I had film cameras and as a kid I thought it was normal to have multiple cameras in the house and found it extremely odd when I had friends at school who’s parents didn’t even own a camera. I feel like this is making me sound old. Anyway the point I’m trying to make is at a young age you never really question some of the things you grow up with, well obviously I didn’t, case in point I never knew white spaghetti was a thing.
We ate multi coloured frusilli pasta, I think I vaguely remember eating white bow pasta and shells but when it came to spaghetti it was always brown and that was just normal to me. It wasn’t until I was about 10 maybe that I realised white spaghetti existed, I was probably at a restaurant but I mostly remember thinking why is this pasta so slimy. Obviously I’ve been on the whole wheat bandwagon since birth and even though I now know it exists I’ve still never bought white spaghetti.
This is another one of those “mother knows best” recipes! Spaghetti bolognese has been my favourite meal for as long as I can remember but specifically this Bolognese. It’s the way my mum makes it, and due to my life time obsession it’s the way I make it and I think it was probably one of the first meals I learnt to cook.
Let’s talk healthy; you don’t need oil to cook this, if possible buy the minced beef with the lowest fat content and always cook the meat first and drain the fat that comes out. We usually add courgette and carrot but when I was at uni I added pretty much any vegetable I could find, it’s a good way to bulk it out and make it stretch further, you might need another tin of tomatoes but feel free to go vegetable crazy. Like I said earlier I’m a supporter of whole wheat pasta which makes things a little healthier too but it also tastes great with courgetti if you have a spiralizer.
Even though this is healthy I can’t resist adding all the cheese, a few parmesan shavings would be the healthy way, or no cheese I guess but that thought makes me incredibly sad. If you’re trying to resist your love for cheese avert your eyes, I like to double up on my cheese; grated mature cheddar mixed in so it melts into everything and parmesan on top, I can almost taste it. I mean you’re being healthy with the bolongese you can splurge on the cheese right? If you’re going to eat it, eat it right! but shh I didn’t say that.

Wensleydale & Cranberry Turkey Burgers with Tangy Sautéed Slaw - Bakemas Day 15

Can we take a second to talk about how flippin’ cute these cocktail sticks are? I’ve been seriously lacking in the “Christmasy looking shots” department and while these burgers were under the grill I found a bunch of those, what are they called, table confetti? As you can see these are highly sophisticated confetti trees stuck on cocktail sticks, did I just shatter the illusion that I came prepared? I’m back to burgers, and in the Christmas spirit they’re turkey burgers with Wensleydale and cranberry cheese. Can you buy Wensleydale anywhere else other than the UK? I only thought about it after I finished making these. Anyway Wensleydale is definitely one of my favourite cheeses, but what’s really nice about it when you use it on burgers is it doesn’t run off, it melts but stays pretty much in shape which means if you’re grilling your burgers half of it doesn’t end up in the bottom of the pan. Weirdly one of my favourite parts of this is the slaw; I would eat a plate of it just on its own but the tangy sweet vegetables go so well with the rest of the flavours. If there’s some left after burger assembling you can have it on the side or just stuff more in your burger which is what I ended up doing, and if you’re a big cranberry fan eating this with cranberry sauce makes it even yummier according to my mum.