Moroccan Pancakes with Soft Curd Cheese and Honey

, from Issue #24, page 93. September, 2015
Photography by Vanessa Wu.
Moroccan Pancakes with Soft Curd Cheese and Honey

Traditionally these pancakes would be served with lashings of butter and honey, but the addition of a soft curd cheese is particularly delicious.

Serves: 4-6

INGREDIENTS

2 cups self-raising flour
1⁄2 teaspoon sea salt
1⁄4 cup caster sugar
1 teaspoon ground fennel seed
1⁄2 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 cup plain yoghurt
1⁄2 cup soda water
2 free-range eggs

To finish
butter for cooking
200 grams soft white cheese, use goats’ curd, ricotta or cottage cheese
well-flavoured honey for drizzling

METHOD

Put all the dry ingredients including the spices into a bowl. Whisk the yoghurt, soda water and eggs together and whisk into the flour. The batter will puff up due to the soda water and won’t be smooth like a regular pancake batter.

Heat a non-stick sauté pan over a medium-low heat and add a small knob of butter. Add a 1/3 of a cup of batter, gently spreading it to a rough 12 cm circle with the tip of a knife. It should be about 1 cm thick. Cook for 2 minutes then turn and cook for a further 1 minute. Keep warm in a low oven. Repeat with the remaining batter.

To serve: Place 1-2 pancakes on each serving plate. Top with a spoonful of curd cheese and a generous drizzle of honey.

For the best flavour grind your own cardamom by removing the seeds from whole cardamom pods and pounding them in a mortar and pestle or spice grinder. Store in an airtight jar.