A few weeks ago in Ankara, Betul had a wonderful idea to cook banana pancakes, inspired by her South East Asia trip. For the pancake base we ended up using ‘gozleme’, a large (about 60cm in diameter), round and very thin bread popular in Turkish cooking. The banana was wrapped in the gozleme and slow dry fried. In combination with either honey and lemon juice or peanut butter, the pancakes were delicious and well appreciated by the house residents except for two traditionalists, Beyza and Ozgur, who insisted on have white cheese (Turkish style) in the gozleme instead of the infidel banana.

In the past two days I have gone several steps further.

On Thursday night I made 3 different pancakes:

a) banana & chocolate

b) strawberry & Nutella, and

c) banana, strawberry, apricot, chocolate & Nutella.

Last night I devised a savoury version with barbequed chicken, yellow cheese, tomato and green chilli wrapped up in the gozleme. Dry (no oil or fat) frying in a saucepan is a great alternative for a kitchen with no oven or grill.

Gozleme pancakes will now be a regular addition to the menu at the Joe’s Ramblings bachelor pad.

NOTE: Sliced pitted black olives makes a great addition when added to above savoury version.