Pancakes stuffed with béchamel, mushroom, ham and cheese

A couple of weeks back, for Pancake day, I spotted this recipe in the Irish Times from Domini Kemp.

I’d tested the pancake recipe already (all in the name of research, I guarantee) for these spinach and ricotta ones I made for Pancake day. I doubled the pancake recipe again, but only used 65g butter this time. The pancakes turned out just as good, so you can cut a few calories and grams of fat. Not that this is going to do you any good in this recipe.

The double pancake batter got me 11 or so pancakes this time. I used eight of them to make this. You’ll need two pancakes per person. I supplemented them with a simple salad.

For the bechemel sauce, you'll need:
30g butter

30g flour

250ml semi skimmed milk

Seasoning

Start by getting your oven heated to 190 degrees.

On the stove (in a pot), make the bechamel sauce - melt the butter, add the flour and mix well. Cook for a minute to cook out the flour. Add the milk a dribble at a time and mix well to avoid lumps. Heat through until the sauce thickens and bubbles. This sauce needs to be thick enough to stay inside the pancake, so it needs to be quite solid. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Stir a good teaspoonful of mustard through the sauce. Chop or slice 250g mushrooms and add them to the sauce. They will cook a bit in the heat.

Take a slice of ham and lay it on the pancake. Add two dessertspoons of the sauce in a line down the centre of the pancake and sprinkle with a little cheese – I used grated gruyere. Roll up and place in a large oven proof dish. Repeat for the other seven pancakes.

I poured about 50ml of light cream over the rolled pancakes before sprinkling the rest of the 100g packet of grated cheese on top.

This goes into the oven for 30 minutes.