From Milk Street Cooking Magazine to Bon Appétit Magazine, I love cooking publications. Hard copies, that provide recipes and photos, that you can page through at breakfast or with a cup of tea in the late afternoon. Yes, you can search for recipes online, but so many of the cooking blogs force you to slog through streams of ads before you even get to a list of ingredients…it’s not worth it. Call me old school, but give me a magazine that will inspire me quickly and cleanly.

An example. I paged through the latest issue of Bon Appétit Magazine today the Chickpea Pancake recipe caught my attention. Made with chickpea flour, cooked in an oven-heated cast iron pan, and topped with spring vegetables with tahini. It sounded delicious. 

Every recipe should be viewed as a suggestion. It’s an inspiration that a cook uses to jump start the meal, using some of the ingredients and methods in that recipe, yet knowing that there is flexibility depending on the cooks preferences and the ingredients that are at hand. I made the chickpea pancake, but topped it with pea-sprouts and fresh spinach, and added some crumbled goat cheese feta on top. It was amazing. I will use this as a go-to base for seasonal vegetables moving into the summer. Bon Appétit!

The latest Bon Appétit magazine where I found the chickpea pancake recipe.

The secret to this is to heat a cast iron pan in the oven until it’s very hot. Then you take the pan out, add olive oil, and pour in the batter, returning the pan to the oven to finish cooking.

I topped the crust with spinach and pea shoots that were briefly sautéed with garlic and some scallions. I finished it with goat-milk feta and a drizzle of olive oil.