Moroccan Pancakes with Soft Curd Cheese and Honey

, from Issue #24. 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.