Ricotta Hotcakes with Caramelised Pears and Greek Yoghurt

In a word, fluffy.

Fluffy as in the pillows you had your head on a few hours ago rather than fluffy, the contents of your bellybutton.

Whisked egg whites are incorporated into the ricotta pancake batter making the finished mix more like a soufflé. The result? Expanding air bubbles and hotcakes that puff up for a lovely light breakfast or brunch dish. Goodbye greasy fry-up. Hello hotcakes!

Pancake Day

We just don't eat enough pancakes in this country. For some reason, everyone goes mad for them on one day in February and then forgets about them for the rest of the year. I feel a bit sorry for "once a year" foods like turkeys, pumpkins, and hot cross buns. A few days in the spotlight, loads of attention, then nothing. Like a Big Brother evictee, that's it until they're rolled out again the following year.

A traditional pancake batter of eggs, milk and flour is fine, but for really great pancakes you need buttermilk. When the acid in the buttermilk reacts with baking soda, it produces enough bubbles to make a lovely fluffy pancake with a very slight tang. With bananas, honey and a dollop of greek yoghurt, I can't think of a better way to start a sunny summer morning.

Black Pudding Brunch

When the head is pounding, when the mouth is dry, when hazy memories of the previous night's excesses dribble back into semi-consciousness, there is nothing that sates an alcohol-induced appetite better than congealed pig's blood. Life comes back into focus after a couple of slices, crispy on the outside but moist in the middle, propped up by thick wedges of crusty white bread and caramelised apples. A rich yellow river of egg yolk slowly oozes down and over the jagged edges of the blood sausage like molten lava creeping over mountain rocks. Its path is anything but destructive.

It revives.

Hello weekend, I'm so glad your here.

Saturday Brunch

I've been itching to make sweetcorn fritters for brunch for the past few weekends but have had such horrendous hangovers that I haven't been able to find my way into the kitchen until, well, about tea-time. On this, the first Saturday morning I haven't had a sore head in a while, sod's law I happen to be out of sweetcorn cobs so instead of making an emergency trip for Nurofen, I pop to the local grocer on a hunt for some corn.

These sweetcorn fritters are what Australian brekkie is all about and I work from Bill Granger's recipe to whip up a batter to go with poached eggs, smoked streaky bacon, and a tomato salsa. I think I've really "cracked" poached eggs now, after several years of constant failure they now explode into a gushing river of yellow on gentle prodding. The dish is such a success that we have a second helping each.