Sue’s Green Pancakes with Lime Butter

I discovered the magic of Green Pancakes with lime butter a decade ago. The UK was going crazy about a guy called Ottolenghi, and his recipes with obscenely long ingredient lists were sending the Guardian comments section into a frenzy. I jumped on the bandwagon too, snapping up a copy of his veg-heavy cookbook Plenty. This recipe caught my eye because it sounded like something out of a Dr Seuss book, but it’s the ingredients that captured my heart; lime, chilli, spinach, butter.

Ingredients

For the lime butter (prep this the night before if possible)
100g unsalted butter, at room temperature
Zest 1 lime plus 2 tbsp lime juice
½ tsp salt
½ tsp ground pepper
1 tbsp coriander leaves, picked
½ garlic clove, finely chopped
½ tsp chilli flakes
For the pancakes
110g self-raising flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 egg
50g unsalted butter, melted
½ tsp salt
½ tsp ground cumin
150ml milk
10 spring onions, finely sliced
2 green chillies, finely sliced
250g baby spinach
1 egg white
Olive oil, for frying

Method

First, make the lime butter.
Put the butter in a medium-sized bowl and beat with a wooden spoon until it turns soft and creamy.
Stir in the remaining ingredients.
Tip everything out on to a sheet of clingfilm or baking parchment and roll into a sausage shape.
Twist the ends to seal, then chill until firm. The recipe makes more than you need, but that’s not an issue – use the leftovers to slather over a jacket potato.
For the pancake batter, put the flour, baking powder, egg, butter, salt, cumin and milk in a mixing bowl, and whisk until smooth.
Add the onion and chilli to the batter.
Put the spinach in a pan with a splash of water, cook until wilted, drain, squeeze dry, then roughly chop and add to the batter.
Whisk the egg white to soft peaks and carefully fold it in to the batter.
Pour a little oil into a frying pan and place on medium-high heat.
For each pancake, ladle two to three tablespoons of batter into the pan and gently press the mix into a disc shape.
You should get smallish pancakes, about 7cm in diameter and 1cm thick.
Cook for a minute on each side, until a nice golden-green colour.
Transfer to a paper towel and repeat, adding oil as needed, until all the mixture is used up.
Keep the cooked pancakes warm.
To serve, pile up as many pancakes as you can handle and place a generous slice of lime butter on top to melt.
Serve with some salad leaves and, if you’re very hungry, an optional fried egg on top!

Recipe and method (very slightly adapted) is from Ottolenghi’s Plenty