In the brief period I was on my feet yesterday, I made these. It’s a dinner on Meal Plan 8. There was very little food left to make anything by the time I got to that point on the plan, and I have been dubious about including them. I try and make the meal plans using recipes that are not too unusual as I want them to be as accessible as possible. I don’t want people looking at the plan and thinking, oooer, that looks wierd, I’m not eating that.

I’m quite happy to offer things that are unusual in the one-off recipes, less so on the weekly plans.

When designing the plan, gazing at the ingredients I had left, I remembered Jack’s leftover porridge pancakes and decided I had enough stuff to make a main meal that way.

Serves 2
150g oats
100g plain yogort
200g onions
200g carrots
59g flour
30ml oil
30g sweet chilli sauce

Before we start, a word about the oats. There are that many to make sure the meal contains enough calories for two adults. However, when I made the three patties in the picture, there was about a third of the oat mix left, and there is no way I could have eaten it. I know my appetite isn’t what it was at the moment, but even so, you may need to use less.

Using the oats, make porridge with up to 300ml water and a good pinch of salt. The aim is to have a really thick porridgey mix, so use as little of the water as you can, whilst making sure the oats get cooked. Leave to go cold.

Dice the onion and carrot up small and cook gently in a tsp of the oil, over a low heat, until cooked through.

While that’s happening, once your oats are cold, splap all the mixture onto a chopping board and pat flat with a spoon or something, to the thickness of a burger. Cut out into rounds using a cookie cutter, or slice into similar sized pieces.

Heat a frying pan to a medium heat, drizzle in 2 tsp oil. Sprinkle a little flour on the top surface of an oaty patty, scoop it up on a fish slice and tip it in the hot pan, flour side down. Repeat with all the remaining mixture.

Leave to sizzle gently until the underside is brown and crispy looking. Sprinkle a little more flour on the top side of each patty. Flip them all over to cook the other side, drizzle on the remaining 2 tsp of oil. Leave for another few minutes to crisp up.

Once crisp, serve immediately with the sauted veg. Add a dollop of yogurt on the side and drizzle over a tblsp of sweet chilli sauce.

I played around for ages over the last few weeks with various combinations of dressings, this seems to be the nicest. I had originally allocated 30ml soy sauce as well to this recipe, but having added it to the yogurt, or the oats, or drizzled it over, nothing seemed to work, so I’ve simply left it out.

These are amazingly good, crispy and delicious. Well, I was amazed when they came out as delicious as they did anyway!

Run out of energy now, so I’ll put in the costs and nutrition later