Scallion pancakes

Lunch, complete with iPad (because reading) and spilled sauce (because real life)

One of the unexpected benefits of my new fridge-dwelling friend is that it has multiple uses. In addition to the whole wheat sourdough loaf that is the centerpiece of Bittman Bread (and my primary motivation for embarking on starter ownership), it turns out that there are quite a few other things you can do with it. The later chapters of the book provide a number of options, including a recipe for scallion pancakes which is a multi-step procedure. In the recipe notes, however Mark Bittman comments that one of his colleagues makes scallion pancakes using nothing more than a portion of starter and a pile of chopped scallions. I tried it myself this weekend to complement a lunch of leftover fried rice, and it was as good as any recipe that I’ve tried before. Maybe even better, because it was so much easier.

I started by melting about 1 Tbsp/15 g bacon fat in a frying pan. While it heated, I poured 100 g of whole wheat starter into a bowl, then thinned it out with about 50 ml of water and a pinch of salt, stirring until it was the consistency of pancake batter. The original recipe specified a bunch of scallions, but thanks to recent supply issues at the supermarket, I couldn’t get any. So I bought watercress instead, similarly spicy and crunchy and green, to bolster the end of the bunch of scallions I had in the fridge. I chopped them up together and mixed them in, then poured the mixture into the hot bacon fat. Cooked for about 5 minutes at medium heat on each side, then sliced up like a pizza and ate with a soy-based dipping sauce. A successful experiment, and one that I expect to become a regular fixture.

Global update

home sweet home

Well, it's been a while since I've been around here. I've been updating plenty on Instagram, so if you want a more detailed recap of the last eight (shriek) months, head over there to rovinglemon. A few high points here:

Miss B is thriving and days away from finishing her extra-long stint in eighth grade. Her first-day assessment of her (no longer) new school has been sustained, and she's already looking forward to ninth grade - after an appropriately slothful summer vacation, of course.

DP is also flourishing; busy as always with work, juggling multiple commitments and getting another new program up and running - just the way he likes it.

My work is also pretty full-on. Last year was one of professional as well as personal transition for me: after 19 years with the same global organization I decided it was time for a change, and am now working (still from home) with a much smaller non-profit startup in the same research area. I love the challenges of working in a startup, even on the days when I feel like it's swallowed my life whole and left me no time to think about anything else.

Home is great: moving to metro DC was dictated by DP's job, but we're really enjoying it - feeling settled in the house, getting to know the area, and in a great location for work trips, family visits, and weekends away. Our plan is to give Miss B a good long stretch of staying put, and it's a huge mental relief not only to be able to think about the future with that in mind, but also to look forward to the prospect.

Food is of course what this blog always comes back to, so here are my top five recipes from my blog hiatus:

1. Shortbread This isn't about a specific recipe so much as it is a technique that I finally realized this Christmas: after multiple disappointments with making shortbread, I finally decided to try a throwaway suggestion from an Australian friend: chilling the shortbread dough before cutting and baking it. And I mean really chilling it - at least two hours, and preferably overnight. This did the trick of improving both the shape and the texture of the finished product, and I will now do this with any shortbread recipe I make from now on, whether the recipe mentions or not. (Here's a good one.)

2. Dutch baby I've written about this before, so I won't rehash the recipe; this is really just a reminder to us all of this as a delicious, easy, scalable, and impressive recipe that can be adapted to almost any situation.

3. Hand pies / turnovers / DIY toaster pastries Whatever you call these, they're delicious, and if you make them square, there's almost no dough wastage. Use this Genius Recipe for pie crust, fill with fruit, jam, ganache, Nutella, whatever. For the next batch, I'm going to cut the dough into rectangles and freeze ready for use, so that I can make these to order. Having a batch of six sitting around ready to eat is too dangerous.

4. Whole wheat sliced bread After multiple failed attempts over the years, I've finally got a recipe for whole wheat bread that I really like. The recipe is a mashup of several others, with a few tweaks of my own, plus one key step from here that makes a major difference to rising and texture.

Slow rise whole wheat bread for slicing

250 g/8 oz whole wheat flour

250 g/8 oz bread flour/strong flour

2 g/.5 tsp kosher salt

3 g active dried yeast

300 ml/1.25 cups liquid, comprising roughly equal parts Greek yogurt, milk, and water

15 ml/1 Tbsp canola or vegetable oil

15 ml/1 Tbsp maple syrup

1. Measure flours, salt, and yeast into large bowl.

2. Measure Greek yogurt, milk, and water into microwave-safe measuring jug and heat until just hot enough that you can stick your finger in and keep it there for 10 seconds. (You can also do this on the stove if you don't have a microwave.)

3. Add liquid, oil, and maple syrup to dry ingredients and stir together briefly. Let this stand for about 20 minutes to allow the flour to absorb the liquid.

4. After 20 minutes, continue mixing the dough until fully combined and consistent, then knead by hand until the dough is smooth and springy. You can continue to add flour as you knead, but it should be a little sticky rather than dry.

5. Put dough back in bowl to rise and cover with a cloth. Leave to rise until doubled in bulk; with the smaller amount of yeast used here, this should take a couple of hours. I prefer this because it gives me more schedule flexibility, and develops the flavor of the bread.

6. When the dough has had its first rise, grease and flour a loaf pan. Shape dough into a loaf (there's a good tutorial here on how to do this) and place in the pan. (The cook who provided the standing technique also says: "It's important that the surface of the loaves be stretched taut; this helps them rise and prevents an overly-dense interior.")

7. Let the dough rise a second time until it starts to rise over the edge of the pan; this should take 40-50 minutes. Heat the oven to 425F/220C.

8. Before putting bread in the oven, make a slash down the middle. Bake at 425F/220C for 15 minutes, then lower the heat to 375F/190C and bake for another 30 minutes before testing the bread for doneness.

9. The traditional way of testing bread is color (golden-brown) and sound (hollow), but these days I like to use an inserted thermometer to confirm that the bread's internal temperature is the recommended 190F/88C.

10. Remove loaf from pan and cool completely before slicing.

5. Zoodle carbonara Given the above list, you may not be surprised to read that I've also decided to make a concerted effort to be more mindful about my carb consumption. I've been doing what I call a "Keto-ish" diet for the last couple of months, and this is my go-to low-carb meal these days.

1. Chop up and fry 2 pieces of bacon.

2. While the bacon is frying, turn 1 medium-sized zucchini into noodles. Add these to the pan with the frying bacon.

3. In a small bowl, mix together 1 egg, 2 tablespoons grated pecorino romano, and 8-10 grinds of black pepper.

4. Pour egg mixture in pan and toss to coat everything.

5. Top with more pepper and cheese and serve immediately.

Serves 1. Can be scaled up.

cookbook collection in its new home

That's about all for now; the only other thing to share is the newest member of the household:

And to hope that you're having as peaceful and enjoyable of a weekend as she is.

Late winter

Just when I was getting into a regular routine of publishing on Sundays, winter school holidays began and poof went the normal schedule! Here's what's been going on since my last post:

Traveling

Lots of Canberrans go to the snow during July school holidays, but I find the idea of getting away from the cold much more attractive, and that's what we usually do. This year we went to New Caledonia, a Pacific island which is also a French territory. July is the "cool" season, which means temperatures are in the 20C-23C (70F-75F) range - perfect beach (and tropical flora) weather for us, although we did notice several locals wearing puffer coats.

The sunset view from our balcony - a nightly highlight of our visit.

Celebrating

Miss B is 13! I didn't manage a birthday post this year, but we celebrated twice - once with dinner and cake for family and a few close friends (can you guess this year's obsession?)...

...and again a couple of weeks later with laser tag, pizza, more cake, and friends. (13! How did that happen?)

Cooking

I recently tweaked my method for cooking homemade pizza after reading something online that I've now lost track of; my takeaway was to put my biggest cast-iron skillet in a very hot oven and heat it thoroughly for about 10 minutes. Then, remove the skillet carefully and throw in a pizza crust. Stick it back in the oven for about 5 minutes, remove again, and flip the crust. Spread it with sauce, top it with cheese, and put back in for another 5 minutes or more, until the cheese is browned and bubbling. This method has produced the best homemade pizza I've made yet, and I tested it on Miss B and two visiting friends who seemed to agree; of course as guests they were very polite - but they also devoured nearly two whole pizzas among three adolescents, which I took as an endorsement.

Speaking of my giant cast-iron skillet, I put it to good use again soon after, making a batch of polpette for the first time in far too long - certainly the first time since we moved here 2 years ago. They were very well received at Miss B's birthday dinner; and even though the recipe makes about 40, I'm going to have make another batch soon because we're already running low!

Baking

Holiday in New Caledonia meant daily access to boulangeries and croissants, and going into withdrawal when we got home compelled me to do something I've been contemplating for years - making my own. It's definitely a project for a weekend when you don't have much else on - the recipe I used has you start 36 hours before you want to eat them - but the actual hands-on work was less than 2 hours total. And it was totally worth it, for the eating and the sense of achievement. I'm already planning my next batch.

Today I baked something a little less ambitious: a variation on this cake from Melissa Clark for snacking and lunchboxes this week. It's a simple recipe, but notable because it marks my official initiation as a user (and fan) of the Eat Your Books website - which indexes thousands of cookbooks, magazines, and blogs and allows you to register and search your own collection, and dig into what you have. (Apparently I have 60,000+ recipes on my shelves.)

That's what's been happening here - although before I finish I must note that I feel lucky to have the privilege to focus on these things as a distraction from recent events in the US - and to come from a city from whose response I can take heart and courage. 

Hands off

Hello! Please insert standard apologies for another long silence here, along with reassurance that I thought often, if not every day, of this blog and how I wished I was posting to it. (Not that that made any visible difference, but maybe it gets me some karmic brownie points for good intentions?)

Anyway, here's a snapshot of what I've been up to since Easter, which may help explain my lack of blog-related focus and posting....

A few months ago, we decided spontaneously to organize a fun mini-break at the beach during Miss B's April school holidays, figuring we'd get some lovely mid-autumn weather. Instead, we timed it perfectly to experience the 'storm of the century' which battered Sydney and the surrounding coastal areas for three days, dumping something like 20 cm/12 in of rain in 48 hours on the town where we were staying. Luckily we had brought lots of videos and we never lost power, unlike a lot of other people. We even managed to sneak out onto the beach between storms a few times to admire the moody skies and gigantic, terrifying surf. (Full disclosure: I am quite likely to find Australian surf terrifying even on a regular beach day.)

,

Sometime after we had already booked (and paid for) the abovementioned mini-break, another travel opportunity came along that we couldn't (and decided not to) refuse. The good news was that it meant we got to spend a week in London as a family. The bad news was that it came up at pretty short notice, and required that we fly out of Canberra two days after getting back from the coast. Fun! Well, the getting-there part, not so much; but the being-there part was fun - even the parts like this: wandering in Hyde Park on our first evening, trying desperately to stay awake until bedtime and taking in a few sights along the way. Other highlights of the week included taking Miss B to my favorite British museum, the V&A, for the first time (a success) and attempting to take her into a pub to meet some of my colleagues (a failure - they chucked us out on account of no children being allowed in after 5pm!).

Part of the reason that the London trip came together is that I was already scheduled to fly to Europe - when the week was over, DP and Miss B flew back to Australia, while I went on to Greece for a week-plus of work meetings. (Yes, my job is very gruelling.) Here's a view of one of many glorious sunsets I witnessed with the Parthenon looming picturesquely in the middle distance.

Needless to say, with all the travelling and other stuff going on, I haven't done a huge amout of cooking in the last several weeks (although I did eat some pretty amazing food in Greece, particularly at this place down the street from my hotel, where I think I ended up eating at least one meal every day that I was in Athens). But I have still found the time to become enamored of two things new to my kitchen:

1. Fried toast. Inspired by this post on food52, this has become my go-to vehicle for gussying up leftovers. The photo above may not look particularly earth-shattering (have I mentioned winter is coming in Canberra, which means no more natural light for dinner photos for a while?), but any kind of sliced bread fried in a pond of olive oil is the perfect carrier for anything involving sauce or gravy. Also stupendous at breakfast time (and a dramatic improvement on fried bread, which honestly I never saw the point of, probably because there wasn't nearly enough olive oil involved).

2. Hands-off dinners. (Ah, we come to the point of the post name at last! Did you think I was referring to the multiple-week silence here? Let's call it a pun.) I've been doing some experimenting lately with the whole roasting-pan-dinner concept - as in, you put a bunch of stuff in a roasting pan and put it in the oven, and when you take it out, that's dinner. I'm not sure why I haven't picked up on this concept sooner, especially given how long I've been cooking dinner, but I'm kind of loving it, especially on school nights. This is a current favorite (again with the crappy pictures): chop up some carrots and potatoes and toss with olive oil and seasonings, then place in a roasting pan and stick in the oven at about 375F/190C. While those get going, prep these devilled chicken pieces (the original recipe calls for legs, but I use drumsticks) and add to the roasting pan. Roast the whole business for 30-45 minutes (giving you time to clean up the kitchen, supervise homework, maybe answer a few emails from your boss who just came online overseas - oh wait, maybe that's just me), or until everything is cooked to your liking, hopefully with some brown crusty bits here and there.

And that's the news update from here. Hope all is well wherever you are?

Instant brining

NaBloPoMo, Day 6.

Speaking of incredibly useful throwaway tips from great food writers, here's one I picked up from the most prolific cookbook writing team in the US, Mark Scarborough and Bruce Weinstein (they also blog occasionally): pickle-juice brining.

This is just what it sounds like: when you finish a jar of pickles, save the brine and use it to brine your next pork or chicken dish. (Brining, in case you're not already aware, makes lean meat juicier and tastier.) Thus, you save a step (since you don't have to make your own brine), avoid waste (since you don't pour perfectly good ready-made brine down the drain), and get a better meal at the end of it. And no, your meat won't taste like pickles - I worried about this the first time I fed pickle-juice-brined meat to the pickle-hating DP, but all he noticed was how good it tasted. Try it and see!

Multi-purpose zesting

NaBloPoMo, Day 5.

I know you've been waiting with bated breath for the answer to yesterday's trivia question. And here it is:

That doohickey on the blade of your citrus zester enables you to cut off a long, thin peel of zest - apparently so you can do this:

and impress your guests when you fancy up their sangria with a garnish. Or you can cheer up your own humdrum-working-day glass of green tea fizz. These are the kinds of things you find out when you read other people's blog archives in bed late at night - in this case a post on use real butter from December 2010. (Thanks Jen!)

Of course, if it does other things too, please weigh in - enquiring minds want to know.

Trivia Tuesday

Here's something I just learned about a kitchen tool I've had for ages. See this picture? This, as you probably know, is a zester - for getting the flavorful top layer off citrus fruits (and leaving the bitter white pith behind). The five small holes at the top do that job. But see the part that I've circled in red? Do you know what that does?

Answer - with illustration - to follow tomorrow!

Rolled pavlova

Pavlova season (and eating-outside season for that matter) is pretty well over in Canberra as of this week; we turned the clocks back over the weekend, which means the sun is setting before 6pm. (Not to mention the 14 days of rainfall we had in March - twice the historical average.) So I'm filing this away for about six months from now, while those of you in the northern hemisphere can get ready to enjoy it.

I've written about traditional pavlova before, and rolled pavlova is just a variation on a theme - same ingredients, different presentation. The great advantage of rolled pavlova is that, unlike the traditional version, which needs to be assembled at the last minute, it is best done a couple of hours in advance and left in the refrigerator to rest.

I used the method outlined in this recipe from taste.com.au, a mammoth and consistently reliable Australian food website. I prepared and baked the pavlova base according to instructions (leaving off the almonds); once it had come out of the oven and cooled a bit, I turned it onto the prepared baking sheet, which I had dusted with confectioner's (rather than the suggested caster/granulated) sugar. Then I spread it with a thin layer of lemon curd, and filled it with whipped cream and my own choice of fruit (in this case, mixed berries) before rolling up and refrigerating for an hour (while we ate lunch). When it was time for dessert, all I needed to do was slice and serve: simultaneously stress-free and impressive, always a winning combination.

Enjoy! Meanwhile I'm thinking it's gotten just about cold enough here to break out the sticky toffee pudding.

DIY adventures

It's pretty hard to see in this photo, but a couple of weeks ago when I pulled this bottle of red wine vinegar out of the cupboard, I noticed a cloudy blob floating in it. My first thought: Yech! Followed closely by my second thought: Jackpot! Because I realized that I had accidentally grown myself a living, undulating mother of vinegar, which are tricky to acquire and are essential to DIY wine vinegar.

Naturally, I immediately set out to make some - emptying vinegar, mother, and some leftover red wine into a crock that I'd been stashing in my laundry room for just such a project. I swirled it faithfully every couple of days, dreaming of salad dressings and fancy pickles, as the laundry room increasingly reeked of vinegar and DP complained. I reassured him it would be worth it, repeatedly...right up until 10 days after starting the experiment, when I took the lid off to have a look at developments and found...nothing. The entire works, including the mother, had disappeared. Evaporated? Soaked into the crockery clay? Who knows? It's a complete mystery. (And such a disappointment!)

I've got another bottle of commercial red wine vinegar in the cupboard, with the lid off, hoping for another mother to manifest. I hear there are other ways, but all of them involve more effort, so I'm going with the slacker's method for now and seeing what happens. Advice welcome.

Silent Sundays

Practice.

Kickass fries

Deep-fried anything is one of my most entrenched cooking fears. Well, not a fear, exactly, but I avoid it. Hot oil is dangerous, it’s smelly; you have to put food into it very carefully, and then watch it like a hawk until it’s time to fish it out even more carefully. Thus frying anything involves placing yourself at length in close proximity to both the danger and the smell, while in your concentration neglecting any small children who may be underfoot. Then, when you’re finally done, you have to figure out a way to dispose of gallons of greasy, smelly cooking oil. And that’s without even getting onto the health question.

So, I deep-fry things a few times a year; most consistently (and not coincidentally), things I watched my mother and grandmother deep-fry, like meatcakes and Christmas doughnuts, which don’t taste right made any other way and which I feel reasonably confident about managing. I have never, ever tried to fry French fries, the typical recipe for which sounds like everything I fear and loathe about deep-frying, except that you have to do it twice. When I make fries, we have oven fries.

Some time ago, however, I came across a Cook’s Illustrated recipe for Cold Oil French Fries. Instead of the traditional method, which involves plunging the fries into (and extracting them from) hot oil twice in quick succession, this recipe has you put the fries into the pan with the cold oil, and then heat them all up together (translation: zero, rather than two, times plunging in hot oil!). Then you cook them over medium heat in the boiling oil until they are brown and crispy. Then you remove them, drain them on brown paper, salt them, and eat them.

Not only is this a much simpler method than the traditional one, it has only one nerve-wracking step, as opposed to four. And the fries are, as I discovered when I made them last night for the first time (and as the title above implies), kickass.

Cold Oil French Fries

adapted from Cook’s Illustrated

The Cook’s Illustrated recipe, as they are wont to do, has various precise specifications about types of potato and oil, peeling and cutting, temperature and so forth, all of which I ignored. The fries may have been more kickass had I paid attention, but their level of kickassedness was perfectly sufficient to make my day.
 

The salient points that I fixed on to ensure the success of the recipe are as follows:

1. Use a heavy, Dutch-oven-type cooking pot to keep the oil sufficiently hot. (I used my Le Creuset knockoff. Bonus cleanup points if you can use one that’s deep enough to minimize oil splattering everywhere.)

2. Make sure that your fries are completely submerged in the oil before starting.

Ingredients

6 small to medium potatoes (I don’t know what kind these are, as I bought them in a brown bag from the guy who grew them, and I forgot to ask. I generally prepare 2 potatoes per person I’m serving, unless they’re gigantic. (The potato, not the person.))

canola oil (or other neutrally-flavored oil, such as peanut; I emptied a 750-ml bottle (~3 cups) over the fries, and added a couple of tablespoons of bacon fat for flavor and good measure)

salt

Method

Scrub the potatoes, remove any sprouts, eyes, or other unsightly bits, and cut into batons about ½-inch (1 cm) thick. (Note that I did not peel my potatoes, but whether or not you do is up to you.)

Line a baking sheet with brown paper and set aside.

Place potatoes in cooking vessel of choice and cover with oil.

Put the pan over low-medium heat and cover pan with a splatter screen if you have one. Keep an eye on the pan as the oil heats, stirring the fries occasionally to make sure they’re not sticking.

When the oil starts to boil, stir the fries again and check the heat setting to make sure the boil is maintained consistently without a) dying off or b) overflowing and starting a fire. Continue stirring fries every few minutes as they cook; once they start boiling, they should take 15-20 minutes to fry. Once they are consistently a light-golden brown, they are done.

Turn off the heat. Once the oil settles down, use a slotted spoon or similar to scoop cooked fries out of the oil and onto the paper-lined baking tray.

Sprinkle with salt. Eat as soon as fries are cool enough to permit injury-free consumption.

Serves 2 adults and 1 child with what appear to be leftovers, until everyone goes back for seconds.

PS: Please report back on how much time elapses before you get a request to make these again. (I got asked at breakfast this morning.)

MacGyver pilaf

When DP goes away, I cook differently. I do a lot of MacGyvering, and focus on using up leftovers. I can concoct a meal for two of us out of a bit of this and a bit of that, that wouldn't really stretch to feed three of us comfortably. And I can make one-dish meals, which Miss B and I will eat quite happily, but which often provoke a "Where's the rest of dinner?" expression on DP's face. (Unlike Miss B and me, DP is one of those people who 'forgets' to eat lunch, so he generally arrives home like a ravening something or other, and enjoys a bit of variety in his ravening.)

Because of this, one-dish meals are often a page-turner for me, as when I came across a recipe for a pilaf recently. But it got me thinking about pilaf as a concept, and how, like fried rice or risotto, it is really an adaptable vehicle for using rice to build a few key ingredients into a complete meal.

So, with that in mind, here's how I made my first MacGyver pilaf earlier this week:

1. Put the kettle on. (If I'd had any stock, I would have heated that instead.)
2. Put a medium saucepan on the stove over low heat, poured in a couple Tbsp (~30 ml/1 oz) of olive oil.
3. Chopped half a red onion and two cloves of garlic, added to the saucepan, let cook gently.
4. Added half a cup (~120 g/4 oz) long-grain white rice to the saucepan, stirred it to coat completely in the warmed oil.
5. Poured in 1 cup (240 ml/8 oz) hot water, added a healthy sprinkle of salt. Stirred thoroughly, clamped on the lid, and left to cook for 12-15 minutes or until all nearly the water was absorbed.
6 While the rice was cooking, I extracted from the refrigerator several containers: one containing about 2 servings of leftover grilled zucchini, one containing about 2 servings of leftover lemon-mustard chicken, and one containing quite a lot of leftover basil-cashew-parmesan dip. I chopped the chicken into bite-sized pieces.
7. When the rice was nearly done, I stirred the zucchini, the chicken chunks, and a heaping spoonful of the dip into the hot rice.
8. I dished it up into two bowls, and dinner was served! With some bread to mop up, and some carrot sticks I had chopped for us to nibble on while dinner was cooking, we were both satisfied and there was just enough left for a thermos lunch for Miss B next day.

Notes: I chose these particular leftovers to go together because they all had a fairly similar Mediterranean flavor profile (lemons/garlic/herbs/olive oil etc) which I thought would harmonize with each other, and with the dish. They did - it really worked, even better than I had hoped; plus it came together really quickly (and with much less stirring than either fried rice or risotto!). I'm now contemplating a variation for dinner this weekend involving brown rice, leftover steak with red wine sauce, and leftover green beans. The permutations are endless once you start thinking about it. The only question is: does it really qualify as a pilaf? Or is there some other catchall term that's better? Wikipedia has a whole list of 'mixed rice dishes' in the pilaf entry; the term is clunky, but the list opens up even more possibilities....

August wrap-up

How can it be August 31 already? Tomorrow is the first day of spring in Australia! Not that winter has been much of a hardship; we've had quite a few grey days, and more rain than I remember in the previous two winters I've spent here, but also plenty of bright, sunny weather for Miss B to put some miles on her new birthday scooter. Some other items of note from August:

Here's a preview of a recipe that is under construction: sliced chorizo glazed with a mixture of red wine, wholegrain mustard, and maple syrup, baked in the oven, and served as an appetizer. I'm still fiddling with the measurements, proportions, and cooking times, but the first couple of trial batches were a hit. Then the chorizo I was using disappeared from Costco, and I've only just found a replacement. So more on that shortly, I hope.

Or I could just start making my own, I suppose, since I signed up to take a sausage-making class earlier this month at a local butcher shop - or, as the butcher called it, "Salami Academy." I learned all kinds of interesting facts and tips, had a chance to use the professional sausage-stuffing machine pictured here, and am now seriously tempted to plunge into the world of charcuterie - two years after everyone else, just as I predicted during my Year of Canning in 2011.

The second half of August has been another round of solo parenting, which means more cooking experiments that hopefully also double as treats for Miss B (and me!). This experiment is crumpets, which went down a storm. I used this recipe, and although they were delicious, they didn't turn out quite as I expected. I'm going to have a go at Delia's recipe next, so more on that later.

More fun with cross-cultural food terminology: the substance pictured here is known as fairy floss in Australia, candy floss in the UK, and cotton candy in the US. I'd love to know if it has yet another name in, say, Canada or New Zealand. (Full disclosure: I loathe it no matter what it's called and always have, but Miss B devours it at every opportunity.)

Did I mention that tomorrow is the first day of spring?

Apple crumble

Sometimes I feel as though I should rename this blog “Roving Lemon’s Cast-Iron Skillets,” given the number of photos in which one features. But they are so reliable and versatile that I find a reason to use one nearly every day. I don’t even bother assigning them cabinet space anymore – they just live on the stovetop, stacked up in a pile.

For my latest skillet trick, I used one to make Skillet Apple Crumble. Having agreed to host a guest lecturer on a weeknight for DP, I was racing around the kitchen, trying to shoehorn starter and dessert prep in with dinner prep, and have the kitchen looking remotely presentable when company arrived. When I make apple crumble, I usually sauté the apples quickly in butter and cinnamon sugar on the stovetop, before dumping them in a baking dish, piling crumble topping on, and sticking in the oven. It was in the midst of the sauté step that I thought, “Why dirty another dish?” So I added a batch of crumble topping directly to the skillet, and into the oven the whole thing went.

DP is not usually a crumble fan, but after he got back from dropping off our guest, he said, “Hey, that crumble was actually good. I would eat that again.”

I’m not saying it was the skillet. But then again, I’m not saying it wasn’t.

Skillet apple crumble

Apple part

half a can of ginger ale*

a large handful of dried cranberries

4 Granny Smith apples

~ 2 Tbsp/1 oz/30 g butter

~ 2 Tbsp/1 oz/30g cinnamon sugar

Crumble part

½ cup/2 oz/60 g whole wheat flour

½ cup/1.5 oz/45 g rolled oats

½ cup/3 oz/90 g raw sugar

¼ cup/2 oz/60 g butter

2 Tbsp/1 oz/30 g maple syrup

Preheat the oven to 350F/180C. Pour the ginger ale into a shallow bowl and add the cranberries. Leave to steep while you get on with everything else.

Peel and core the apples, then chop into chunks. Melt the butter in a medium cast-iron skillet over low-medium heat, and add the apples when the butter starts to bubble. Sauté the apples in the butter until lightly browned, stirring frequently and sprinkling with cinnamon sugar. Remove from the heat and stir in the soaked cranberries until evenly distributed, then spread out the fruit mixture into an even layer in the bottom of the skillet.

While apples are cooking, place crumble topping ingredients in a food processor and blitz to a uniform rubbly consistency. Scatter thickly over fruit, then place the skillet in the oven and cook for about 30 minutes, or until the top is browned.

Serves 6.**

* I used this because I had an open can needing to be used up. You could substitute any kind of juice.

** I served this with pouring cream, which was good. Then I ate leftovers the next day for breakfast with a big dollop of Greek yogurt, and that was so much better.