“Here is my recipe for using up excess greens! Too many leaves in your veg box? Left some tasty greens for too long in your fridge? Fear not – you can still create a delicious and nutritious meal from them”, said Tom

Ingredient:

• Greens (spinach, kale, chard, any green leaves really!). You can use anything up to a whole bag of the stuff from your veg box but a dozen or so leaves is usually about right. You can even spot a rather sad looking courgette in the picture below :-).
• 1 pint of milk (non dairy milk substitutes work fine too)
• onions and any other veg (optional, for accompaniment)
• 4 eggs
• 250 g (8oz) flour
• salt
• butter or oil for frying

Method:

1. Give your greens a quick wash.

2. Remove most of the stalk from each leaf and put the leafy bits into a blender or smoothie maker with the milk (or substitute). I like to keep the stalks, chop them up and fry them up with some onions and any other veg to make an accompaniment to the pancakes. Or chard stalks are delicious steamed and served with a bit of butter. But you could just compost them, I won’t tell anyone!

3. Blitz the leaves with the milk in the blender until you have a nice smooth green ‘smoothie’.

4. Beat the eggs with the flour. Gradually add the green smoothie to the mixing bowl and incorporate using a whisk to get a nice smooth batter.

5. Add a generous pinch of salt and mix thoroughly with the whisk. The green batter can be thinned further if desired for a thinner pancake. I usually add up to another half pint of milk or water.

6. Heat a small amount of butter or oil in a frying pan and use a ladle to fry pancakes.

Serve with savoury toppings/fillings of your choice. We often use cheese, mayonnaise, pickles, chutneys and of course the fried up veggies to make wraps that can even be chilled and eaten the next day as a convenient and nutritious snack!

Enjoy! Bon appetit! Buon appetito!