Dill Pikelets with Smoked Salmon

June 18, 2001

After lamenting my lack of a close acquaintance with snow last week, things were rapidly rectified and we awoke next day to snow all over the lawn, the drive, the roof. It was a panel beater's dream for a couple of days and the local fracture clinics were pretty busy as icy roads and paths took their toll.

Here at the bottom end of the world, a white Christmas is the stuff of Christmas cards. Our Christmases are often celebrated during holidays at the beach. While some of us valiantly roast the turkey while the sun blazes into the kitchen, others more sensibly opt for a barbecue.

A trend that has taken on in recent years is for a mid-year "Christmas" dinner with all the traditional northern hemisphere trimmings. The stores have even taken to selling Christmas decorations again in June.

Today's recipe is one that would be suitable for nibbles to pass round with the bubbly at such an occasion. I made a large batch of these to take along to a party last weekend and they all disappeared fairly rapidly.

A pikelet is like a small thick pancake and the name comes from bara pyglyd, Welsh for "pitchy bread." The pikelet batter is a little thicker than pancake or crepe batter.

Both my mother and mother-in-law are expert pikelet makers and no family afternoon tea gathering was ever complete without a batch of pikelets, often topped with jam and cream, or just served plain with butter.

Pikelet making tends to be a bit of a lost art these days, although the pikelet has re-emerged recently in a savoury guise. Tiny pikelets, about 2.5cm across, make an ideal base for bite-sized canapes. (How many times have you struggled with finger food that was just too large for one mouthful but wouldn't yield when you tried to bite it in half, or the filling oozed down your hand-dyed silk scarf?)

Dill Pikelets with Smoked Salmon

2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon dried dill tips
grated rind of 1 lemon
1 1/2 cups milk
2 medium eggs

Sift the flour and baking powder onto a large bowl and stir in the salt, dill, lemon rind and sugar. Whisk together the eggs and milk and stir well into the dry ingredients - or you can place the lot in a food processor and blend till smooth.

Heat a non-stick frypan or griddle and grease it lightly. Put a teaspoon of the mixture on the pan and cook until the upper surface become dull, then flip the pikelet over and cook until the other side is golden brown. I usually make one or two trial ones to get the pan temperature correct - turn the pan back to medium once it has heated up.

If you make about half a dozen at a time, once you have flipped these over you can spoon out another six. When you've done that the first six will have finished cooking. It's easier than trying to make 12 at a time. Grease the pan lightly from time to time.

Set the cooked pikelets on a rack to cool down. This mixture will make several dozen. You could freeze half if you don't need this many.

For the topping you will need:

100g cold smoked salmon
1 container or packet of cream cheese (about 200g)
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Chop the smoked salmon in a food processor then add the lemon juice and the cream cheese cut into cubes. If the mixture is particularly stiff, you can soften it with a little cream or milk. Do so cautiously as you don't want it to get runny.

Arrange your pikelets on serving trays or plates. Use a rosette nozzle and fill a piping bag with the salmon mixture and pipe a rosette onto each pikelet. I garnished my pikelets with tiny triangles of cucumber and slivers of pickled red pepper. Cut the end off a small telegraph or Lebanese cucumber and cut down through it lengthwise for about 4cm eight times, cartwheel fashion. When you slice the cucumber each slice will then yield eight triangles. Pat these dry with a paper towel before using for garnish.

Alternatively you could garnish the decorated pikelets with a little fish roe.