Sunday, February 3, 2013

Weekend Cooking: Imbolc Recipe

This weekend it is Imbolc. I have no clue which day it is exactly this year, but mostly somewhere between 1 and 3 february. I am not sure if most readers know but I am trying to live with the seasons and the old pegan celebrations fit this way of life perfectly. Imbolc is the time that we are starting to look ahead from winter to spring. It is not spring yet, but the first signs are there. Houses get cleaned, people seed new veggies for the upcoming year and there are newborn lambs. And I, I cook! To me there is nothing better than to eat something fitting to get in touch with these changes :) Something that is considered typical Imbolc food are pancakes! So yesterday Nick and I made some pancakes together. But not normal pancakes but really fluffy ones that are called blinis. You can serve them with any topping you can think of. Or include whatever you want, but because it was our first try, we kept it simple. This also goes for the cheese, you can interchange that too. I will share this basic recipe with you, which comes from Season to season - a year in recipes by Sophie Dahl.

Blinis - Base recipe (makes 4 large ones)

Blinis:
- 175 gr flour (I used wheat flour)
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 300 ml milk
- 150 gr ricotta cheese, crumbled
- a handful chives
- a handful parsley
- 4 egg whites (save the yolks!)
- some butter or oil
- salt

Egg topping:
- 2 eggs
- 4 egg yolks
- pepper and salt
- some butter
- some milk

Sift flour, salt and baking powder in a bowl. Mix them with the milk until you have a batter. Add ricotta, chives and parsley and mix well. In another clean bowl, mix the eggwhites until they are thick and fluffy. Make sure the bowl is fat free or else it might fail. You can use lemon juice for this. Lightly stir them in the batter, but not too long. Bake these in some oil or butter, a large soup laddle at the time, for 3-4 minutes. You can see little airholes in the batter and then you can flip them. Bake the other side for a minute or so.

For the egg topping, mix the eggs with salt and pepper, and scramble them. If they get dry, add some milk. Of course you don't have to make the egg topping, but keep your egg yolks, you can make eggs the next day or so :) It would be a shame to waste them :)

This post is part of Weekend Cooking hosted by Beth Fish Reads. Check out the other posts as well :)


5 comments:

  1. These sound really yummy. I didn't know about Imboic but yes, in early February one does feel a change.

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  2. I love ricotta pancakes. Coincidentally, I had pancakes this morning, so I was in tune with the pagan year and didn't even know it!

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  3. Love blinis with smoked salmon on top.... Have a good week.

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  4. Those look really good. I've been celebrating Imbolc all weekend with some planning that looks forward to spring.

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