Roast Poblano crema

I live about ten miles from Ely, where there is a cathedral, a very, very good bookshop, and an excellent twice-monthly farmers' market. There are about 30 stalls, and it's a great place to pick up local meats (a slab of belly pork is lurking deliciously in the freezer as we speak) and things like good free-range eggs, pork pies and ostrich products from Bisbrook farm. Because this area is right at the heart of East Anglia's patchwork of farms, the stalls are packed to the gills with interesting fruit and vegetables. The bread in particular tends to run out early - if you do visit Ely for the market, try to get there before 11am.

Edible Ornamentals, a Bedfordshire farm growing chillies, usually has a stall full of chilli plants, pots of sauce and chillies both fresh and dried. I love their chilli sauces (some so hot it's amazing that a glass jar can contain them without dissolving in protest), but their fresh chillies can be downright amazing, and I was delighted to score five big, fresh Poblanos for £3.

Poblanos are the fresh pepper which, when dried, become Ancho and Mulato chillies. (An Ancho is dried more than the slightly soft and fruity Mulato.) They are a mild, purple pepper with a deep, fruity background - lots of flavour and very little heat, although the redder pepper in my bag was a little hotter than the others. I was planning a chilli con carne, and had some Mulatos in the cupboard ready for deployment in that. What better to eat as a side dish than a Poblano crema - those fresh Poblanos roasted, skinned and mixed with crème fraîche, lime and coriander?

To make enough crema to accompany a chilli for two or three, you'll need:

5 fresh Poblano peppers
5 tablespoons crème fraîche (or Mexican crema, if you can find it)
6 spring onions (scallions), chopped
1 large handful chopped coriander
Juice of 1 lime
Salt and pepper
Olive oil

Rub the whole peppers with olive oil and arrange in a baking tray. Cook at 180° C (350° F) for 20 minutes, until the skin is browned and blistering (see picture). Put the whole cooked peppers in a plastic freezer bag, seal the top and put aside for five minutes while you chop the spring onions.

The business with the freezer bag will help the peppers steam from the inside, loosening the skin so you can peel it off easily. When the peppers are cool enough to handle, peel off their skins and discard, then chop open and carefully remove all the seeds. Some people like to do this under a running tap, but I recommend keeping the cooked peppers well away from water to preserve their delicious juices. Slice the silky peeled peppers into long, thin strips and put in a bowl with any juices. (I really enjoy this bit - peeled, roast peppers feel beautiful between the fingers.) Reserve a few strips on a plate to use as a garnish.

Stir the crème fraîche, pepper strips, spring onion and coriander together with the lime juice. Taste, and add salt and pepper. Garnish with more coriander and the reserved peppers, and chill for an hour before serving.

This is deliciously cooling served alongside a chilli con carne - it also makes a fantastic filling for baked potatoes and is gorgeous slopped on a baguette.

Chinese spring onion pancakes

(That's Chinese scallion pancakes for those of you cooking under the weight of a transatlantic language barrier.)

When I was a kid, my parents acted as guardians to another girl at my school, whose own parents lived in Hong Kong. Wai boarded at school in the week, but used to come and stay with us at the weekends, and those weekends became positive orgies of Chinese cooking. Wai, my Dad and I sprayed the kitchen with a fine glaze of soya sauce and palm sugar every Saturday in an attempt to pretend we weren't in Bedfordshire, but somewhere far more exotic with zinc-topped tables.

These flaky, crisp, aromatic little hotcakes are messy fun to make, and they were one of our favourites. Like puff pastry, they're folded on themselves and rolled out several times, like a samurai sword (albeit one punctuated with onions), resulting in a glassy crisp surface and a softly flaking interior. My poor mother used to look on in horror at the mess; if you're making these at home, I'd recommend using a glass or marble board (if you own one) to roll the dough rather than using the kitchen surface. They don't take long, and they're a delicious starter.

To make six (serves three people as a starter) you'll need:

1 cup plain flour
⅓ cup boiling water
2 tablespoons lard (duck or beef dripping will also work well, but make sure you use an animal fat for the flavour)
6 spring onions (scallions)
1 drop sesame oil per pancake
Salt and pepper

Combine the flour and water in a mixing bowl, and knead the mixture hard until you've got a smooth, soft dough. You'll have to work the dough to make it smooth; keep kneading for a few
minutes. Leave the dough to rest for 15 minutes to allow the gluten to develop, helping the dough to become more stretchy.

When you set the dough aside to rest, you can use your spare 15 minutes to chop the spring onions finely and take the lard out of the fridge so it's soft when you come to use it.

Divide the dough into six pieces. Roll a piece flat, into as thin a circle as you can manage, and spread one side generously with the softened fat.Add a drop of sesame oil, and sprinkle one chopped spring onion over the top.

Roll the circle of dough up tightly like a scroll, with the onions inside. Use your hand to flatten the roll, fold it in half and use a rolling pin to make it into a flat circle again. You don't need to flour your board; the fat from the dough will stop anything from sticking. Roll into a scroll again, then repeat the folding and flattening. You will have a pancake with many layers, each with a little fat between them. The edges won't be very tidy; don't worry.

Repeat for each piece of dough. Season each pancake on both sides with salt and pepper.

Melt a teaspoon of the remaining fat in a large, non-stick frying pan, and bring up to a high temperature. Slide the pancakes into the pan, and fry on one side for about 5 minutes until golden. Add another teaspoon of fat to the pan and flip the pancakes over using a spatula. Cook for 5 minutes more, until crisp and golden, and transfer to a serving dish.

If you've got guests, you might want to use scissors to cut the pancakes into triangles. I didn't; we just put them on our plates and gobbled.