This months recipe for Ruchita is only one of many, many ways I love to eat asparagus.

Using bought butter puff pastry & making a tart is easy & fun.
Adding a creamy base with a bit of cheese & some salt & pepper just takes it up a notch to make it a great starting point for lunch or dinner.

It was great having the opportunity to cook with Ruchita when she & James visited in October & one of the things we talked about was the way I present the recipes to her.
Turns out she prefers each recipes to have 2 pages; the 1st page dedicated to the ingredients & the 2nd page the method.
I had deliberately changed that format, thinking it might make everything easier if it was all on one page.
I also thought it would be fun to have it in a circle format, but she didn’t find that layout was easy to follow.

Truth be told, I'm actually relieved.
Unless the recipe is super short, it's quite difficult to work out how to fit it all on one page & often times I've had to redraw the whole thing. There's just not enough wiggle room on one page so we're back to two again.
I'm also playing with the drawing of the ingredients & we'll just see how that goes over the next few months. 

Here's to asparagus: it's here for a good time, certainly not a long time

Last month's recipe used buckwheat flour which is quite an expensive resource here in New Zealand so this month I thought it would be nice to add another recipe using it.

I usually make a large pancake for breakfast & eat it with chia seed pudding, sunflower seeds, chopped up fruit, a dollop of coconut cream on the top & a big squeeze of lime juice !
You can make smaller pancakes, pikelet size is good if you are making them to share.
​I make a batch of this batter up & store it in the fridge in a jar from which I can pour it directly into the pan.

The recipe is very adaptable:

You can use any sweetener; just be sure to add liquids like honey or maple syrup in with the liquid ingredients.
I use brown sugar because I like the flavour of it. I also like palm sugar but sometimes I can't be bothered grating it !

You can use any milk; dairy or non dairy.
I've made them it almond, rice, coconut milk & buttermilk. My favourite thing to do is use the buttermilk left over from making the soda bread & I add rice milk to make up the volume if I haven't got enough. The liquid you use will alter the flavour AND consistency of the batter e.g. rice milk makes thin batter, coconut milk makes very thick batter.

You can use any oil or butter & as it makes a difference to the flavour use what you like.

I use vanilla essence because I love the flavour of vanilla essence.

Did you notice the cinnamon ?
I bet Ruchita's gonna HATE that (it's one of very few things she doesn't like) but I think it's a key ingredient for flavour so it stays in hahahahaha #sorrynotsorry

​It was inevitable that Ruchita would ask me if I would draw her a recipe for sweet treats & also inevitable that I would say no.

Rubbing butter into flour is actually very easy & doesn't take too long.
Here's my best tip: cut the butter into little cubes then put it back into the fridge & let it get hard before you use it.

You'll know the butter is properly rubbed in when you cannot distinguish it as separate pieces of butter anymore.
Contrary to what the recipe books say it WILL NOT look like breadcrumbs !!!
​I have no idea where that description comes from, nor why it persists, but I do wonder if perhaps it goes back to the days of using lard. Does anyone know ?

Because you're using baking soda as the raising agent there's no waiting time between mixing the dough & baking the bread & the dough can be mixed gently.
This bread won't rise a great deal for 2 reasons:

1. using buckwheat flour which is gluten free
2. by rubbing the butter into the flours we've effectively 'shortened' the flour & coated the gluten (in the wheat flour) in the butter. This will also prevent the bread from being too tough.

This is why leaving the salt out or reducing the amount of salt in the recipe will make very little difference to the baked loaf. It just becomes a taste thing.
In fact I've halved the amount of salt used in the original recipe.