Crispy chickpea & spring onion pancake with peanut and lime

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My cookbooks (there are five) are available here. The latest is Easy Wins, a Sunday Times bestseller. There are hundreds of free recipes on my website which you can find here.

A good amount of my eating life has been spent in California cafes. The kind of place where you can get a kale salad, a rye sprout sandwich and nine types of green smoothie. This is the kind of food I love to eat and at this time of year I start to crave it.

I spent a few of years of childhood living in San Francisco. It was the 80’s. I remember eating a lot of what was then called ‘health’ foods, from fruit leather (yes) to the the gritty kind of peanut butter (we just wanted Skippy) and of course, the sprout salad sandwiches 10cm high. It cemented in me a lifelong love of California hippy cafes.

In our 20’s my sister Laura and I spent a lot of time in America. Every trip would start with a visit to the Wholefoods buffet and a guava strawberry kombucha. I can still feel in my body the excitement of walking into the Venice Wholefoods (my personal favourite). The smell, the choice, I actually thought life could not get any better than sitting in the California sun with a Wholefoods salad box on my knees. I’m not sure if the food was actually that good or if it was more that, for me and Laura, this was a world of choice and freshness that we could not get at home in London.

Laura and I also had a rota of cafes we’d visit - the original Cafe Gratitude, where all the dishes were called things like “I am ecstatic", hold on, they still are. So, in ordering, you were also affirming - mildly exposing and so unBritish, but we got used to it. Your server would also open with a daily spiritual anecdote.

Other favourites we always visited were Nature Well in Silverlake for the kale and cardamom smoothie, Flori for OG sprout sandwiches and Urth cafe for matcha (which was hard to find then). We loved Sage in Silverlake for Black bean bowls and nice cream (wholefood ice cream made of cashews, cacao etc). This was 20 years ago before this kind of food had reached most of London and when eating a kale salad seemed kind of extreme. While I loved these places then, I can’t vouch for any now as I’ve not been to California for 5 years or so, but the memories of these places and their food bring back the most vivid feelings of good times in the place we loved the most.

Soon enough, Laura moved to LA, and we got to know the gems of the city, where chefs mixed the openness of California cooking with the incredible ingredients that grow there. Favourites were Squirl (pre-scandal) and still are Botanica, Elf (sadly closed) Kitchen Mouse and Kismet. I could write a list several pages long (though with Laura’s help.)

So much of my cooking has been influenced by these California cafes, these beloved California restaurants and Laura and her skill for finding the best food in a supermarket or a city. So much of how I look at food is thanks to you LJ.

So this week’s recipe feels like a return to the food I love the best. It’s a recipe from Easy Wins that feels like something from one of those cafes and it reminds me of (and I am sure is partly inspired by) a pancake I ate at a California-style cafe in Hackney called Palm Greens. It has just reopened on Cheshire Street in Shoreditch.

I really love savoury pancakes and I’ve written a lot of recipes for them in my books. I love to make them with chickpea (gram) flour, it's super cheap and could not be easier. The base of this pancake recipe is the same as the carrot and chickpea pancake from A Modern Cook’s Year that I’ve been making for years.

For about a year when I was doing IVF, I was advised to cut down on gluten and I would make big batches of this batter to replace bread, wraps and tacos. It’s best cooked in a stainless steel or non-stick pan (a non-toxic one).

The slaw brings in freshness. I used up a load of vegetables that I had leftover in the fridge from another recipe, but the recipe can be adapted to the veg you have. I would choose a base of cabbage or crunchy lettuce, then add some crunch and colour with carrots, beets, radishes. Don’t skip the pickled shallot - it adds the punch and limey acidity.

I make a super-easy peanut butter sauce, which brings it together. It's the work of seconds. The tofu is optional but encouraged. I crumble and fry it so it's crisp then add a little of the peanut butter sauce in the pan to coat and crisp it. It's a great way to cook tofu - I often make it and have it simply with noodles and lots of ice-cold cucumber.

There are a few things to prepare here but once you’ve made a batch, the slaw, batter and sauce can keep in the fridge for days. Until I can get back there this will be my fix of California cooking.

Crispy chickpea & spring onion pancake with peanut and lime

Make sure you get your pan nice and hot and add a decent amount of oil to the hot pan before cooking the pancakes, its key to them not sticking. If they do stick loosen with a spatula and then use a plate to flip, like a Spanish tortilla. If yours breaks up a bit don’t worry.

Serves 4

250g gram flour
2 tablespoons olive oil, plus extra for frying
1 shallot or small red onion, peeled and thinly sliced
zest and juice of 1 unwaxed lime
½ a small red cabbage (300g), finely shredded
1 large carrot, peeled and coarsely grated
a bunch of coriander (30g), chopped
2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds, plus extra to finish
4 tablespoons soy sauce or tamari
4 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
2 tablespoons maple syrup
2 × 20g pieces of ginger, peeled
125g peanut butter
3 tablespoons sriracha
a bunch of spring onions, trimmed and finely sliced
350g tofu

Make the pancake batter

Put 250g gram flour into a bowl with up to 450ml cold water, and mix until you have a thick crêpe batter; gram flour will differ in how much water it will absorb. Whisk in 2 table­ spoons olive oil and a generous pinch of sea salt. Leave to sit for at least 30 minutes but ideally for an hour.

Make the slaw

Finely slice 1 peeled shallot or small red onion, mix it with the zest and juice of 1 unwaxed lime in a small bowl and leave to sit. Put 300g finely shredded red cabbage into a large mixing bowl with 1 large peeled and coarsely grated carrot, ½ a bunch of chopped coriander and 2 table spoons toasted sesame seeds.

Dress the slaw

Mix 2 tablespoons soy sauce or tamari with 2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar and 2 tablespoons maple syrup, then grate in 20g peeled ginger. Pour over the slaw and leave to sit.

Make the peanut sauce

Mix 125g peanut butter with 2 tablespoons soy sauce, 2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar and 3 tablespoons sriracha, then grate a 20g piece of peeled ginger. Loosen with a little water until the mixture has a drizzling consistency.

Cook the pancakes

Once the batter has rested, add a bunch of finely sliced spring onions, reserving a few for serving. There should be enough batter to make 4 large pancakes. Heat a little oil in a frying pan over a medium heat, add a ladleful of the batter and angle the pan so the batter covers the base. Cook for 2–3 minutes until golden brown, then carefully flip on to the other side and cook for another 2–3 minutes until golden.

Remove to a plate and keep warm in a low oven while you cook the other 3 pancakes in the same way. You might need to add a little more oil between each one.

Cook the tofu

Once all the pancakes are cooked, add a little oil to the same pan, put on a medium-high heat and roughly crumble 350g tofu into the pan in chunks. Cook until golden brown all over, then turn the heat down to low, add 2 tablespoons of the peanut sauce, toss for a minute to coat, then take off the heat.

Finish the slaw

Add the limey shallots/onions to the slaw and mix. Put everything together. Serve the pancakes with the slaw and tofu piled on top, with ½ a bunch of coriander, the last of the spring onions and sesame seeds and some of the peanut sauce.

Ask Anna

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