The Substitute Kitchen

Sunday Strawberry and Yogurt Pancakes

When we went to the organic market yesterday I bought some beautiful strawberries. Strawberry pancakes- perfect Sunday breakfast! The original recipe called for buttermilk but, of course, we can’t get that here, so the substitute for today is yogurt and milk for buttermilk.

Ingredients:

1 cup plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp sugar

1 egg

1 1/4 cup milk

1/4 cup yogurt

Butter for cooking

Strawberries

How to:

Mix the flour, baking powder and sugar together. 

Then add the wet ingredients- the eggs, milk, yogurt- and whisk till smooth.

Heat the pan and melt the butter to coat. Add the batter and top with slices of strawberries. Cook until bubbles appear and then flip it over.

These pancakes aren’t ‘pretty’ once you flip them so don’t stress about that. They taste amazing though.

Saturday organic markets

Ubud has come a long way from the days of powdered milk, Blue Band (vile palm oil spread -  before butter came to town) and overdosing on cashew nuts. The days when our mums had to make their own yogurt, pasta and breads, fainting in excitement if a wheel of anything other than Anchor rubber cheese made it into one of the “supermarkets” down south.

Cut to 2010, where we now have our own organic markets on Saturday and Wednesday mornings plus a sprinkling of delis and health food shops across which we can find a random assortment of decent ingredients. As long as imports haven’t been restricted or taxes hiked up so much that buying decent groceries make our eyes water.

But back to the markets. Electricity was cut off (again) this morning so we thought it was a perfect time to get out of the house and check out what was on offer down at Pizza Bagus (site of said market). Not surprising there was already quite a crowd there at 10 am, browsing the vendors and picking up a range of veggies and dried goods.

I was on a mission to find some whole wheat flour after trawling the various health food shops and, yes, even Bintang - our local supermarket - and failing miserably on all counts. So I was super excited when I came across some spelt flour instead! I vowed to immediately google “spelt bread” as soon as I got home, the thought of having bread again sending me quite loola.

We ducked into the new(ish) deli next door and picked up some cheese and other yummy supplies to supplement our larder. Miss M scored what looks like delish prosciutto and I managed to find some decent tasting white cheese (a name I’ve never heard of and promptly forgot but tastes somewhere between parmesan and mozzarella) after staring longingly at the Gorgonzola then regretfully declining (yeast free diet now also enforced, sigh).

It was then time to bring our haul home and scratch our heads about how we were going to use the random treasures we found. I for one can’t stop thinking about using my spelt flour. The results I’m sure will be posted asap.

There are times when the supplies are a plenty on our little island. Then there are days when every decent imported food has either tripled in price or disappeared entirely. We just have to roll with it and come up with interesting ways to make do with what we find. Musn’t complain, we are living in paradise.