Stuffed pancakes

This is an awful faff to make, but worth it once in awhile.  Serves 4.

For the pancakes:
110 g buckwheat flour (or gram flour, or even plain wheat flour)
1 egg
250 ml milk
Seasoning

For the stuffing:
1 tbs oil
1 onion
1 clove garlic
1/2 punnet mushrooms
2 large tomatoes
1 slice bread
30 g (approx) walnuts
Seasoning

For the béchamel sauce:
25 g butter
250 ml milk
2 heaped tsp flour
2 large handfuls grated cheese
Seasoning

First make the pancake batter by whisking together the egg, flour and milk, seasoning as liked.  Leave to stand while you make the stuffing: peel and chop the vegetables (probably no need to peel the mushrooms), cook in the oil until soft and juices run; whizz bread and nuts in a food processor until smooth, and then mix into the rest of the stuffing.

Make your pancakes in the usual way - this amount makes about 4 large ones.  It's probably easiest to layer them up with stuffing in between, but I tried to be clever and roll them round the stuffing:

 Melt the butter in a clean saucepan, and whisk together the flour, milk and seasonings.  Pour this on to the melted butter and bring to the boil, stirring all the time.  Remove from the heat and stir in half the cheese.  Pour this mix over the pancakes, and then top with the rest of the grated cheese.

You can easily make this vegan; the stuffing already is.  For the pancakes, use water or beer instead of milk, and a tablespoon of olive oil or tahini instead of the egg.  For the sauce, use a tin of tomatoes instead of the milk, and season more vigorously to make up for the lack of cheese. 

Mushroom, bean and barley slow cooker casserole

I wanted a casserole I could leave in the slow cooker until I got home after grandmother duty yesterday, and this was it!  You could, of course, substitute a tin of cannellini beans for the dried ones I used, but I prefer the texture when made from scratch.

1/2 cup dried cannelini beans
1/2 cup pearl barley
1 tbs cooking oil
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
2 carrots
1/2 large sweet pepper
2/3 large punnet mushrooms
1 tin tomatoes
About 200 ml red wine
Seasoning to taste
1 large tbs mascarpone (optional - thicken with cornflour if preferred/vegan).

Soak the beans in boiling water to which you have added a little bicarbonate of soda for at least an hour.  Then drain and rinse, and transfer to a saucepan.  Cover with fresh water, bring to the boil, and allow to cook hard for 10 minutes.  Drain again, and transfer to the slow cooker, together with the barley.

Now in the saucepan in which you cooked the beans (to save washing up), add a sloosh of vegetable oil, then sweat the chopped carrots, onion, garlic and pepper for a few minutes.  Add this to the slow cooker, then put the chopped (not too small - I break them into quarters, and then chop the stalks separately) mushrooms into the saucepan and sweat until the juices run.  Put these in the slow cooker, along with the rest of the ingredients except the mascarpone, and cook on auto until supper time - at least 5 hours, I reckon; mine had about 8.  Then stir in the mascarpone, if using, and serve, ideally with a green vegetable.

It is lush, but not very photogenic.....