A Long and Unfortunate Silence…

…hi. I’m back. I don’t know whether my dear co-author will also return. (I do hope so)

I shall try and offer you some recipes in a second, mainly oriented around “what you can do with a useless hob and two very small pans”, because that’s largely the sort of cooking I’ve been doing lately.

Also, frankly, I think there ought to be some knitting patterns up here soonish, so dammit I shall pester the other one.

And, to while away the time until I get my act together properly, here is a very simple recipe for pancakes. And do you know what the best thing to listen to whilst cooking is? No? Well, then, I demand that you head straight on over to BBC iPlayer and listen to this… (Of course, I realise that in a few days’ time that link will be invalid – damn iPlayer for removing their stuff.) So in case that happens sooner than I thought, I was suggesting ‘The Paul Temple Mysteries’, recorded in the 1950s. They’re really quite delightful. He’s an author-cum-sleuth, and has a batty and danger-prone wife who has ‘little intuitions’ and likes hats. I love ‘Steve’ (which is the name of wifey). It’s a terribly sexist programme, and as a feminist and 21st century right-thinking woman I should probably hate it. But I’m afraid I just can’t… It’s so much fun!

Anyway, on with the pancakes:

you will need:

1 mug
plain flour
milk
1 egg
oil
a frying pan
topping/filling of your choice. (I suggest bananas and nutella)

1. Fill the mug with flour, and sieve it into a bowl.
2. Fill the same mug with the milk and beat the milk and flour together until smooth and unlumpish.
3. Beat in the egg, and continue beating for a while until totally smooth and unlumped. You can use electric beaters or a handwhisk, if you feel so moved. (At university, in the absence of any such utensils, I just used a spoon. It took a while.)
4. If you’ve got time, leave the mixture to stand in the fridge for about 30mins. Or longer.
5. Then, heat a little oil in the frying pan, wait until it’s really rather hot, and then add a ladleful of the pancake batter.
6. You can tell when the first side is approaching done-ness by how solid the top side is. When it’s pretty solidified and bubbles are starting to appear and burst on the surface, flip the thing over. You can either risk life and limb by tossing the thing (when we did this at university, one pancake went out the window and another got stuck to the ceiling before landing on E-the-vet’s head) or you can just politely turn it over with a fish slice or other such device.
7. Allow to cook for a while on the other side, then tip onto a plate and slather with the topping.
8. EAT IT.