Working and pancakes just don't mix. When you get home from work you want to eat dinner, plain and simple. Eat. Dinner.
In Phantom Towers, most of the time I cook, and if I've just got through the door, cooking the main course is just about my limit. Most years, therefore, my good lady misses out. This year she had a plan....
Our good friend Battey Moo has had a rough time of late, so my wife invited her round for a meal, on Tuesday. Cunning. I suspect she felt the social pressure of having another mouth to feed would ensure she got an evening of batter delights, lifted with the scent of citrus, and frosted with caster sugar like snow on a winter's morn.
I really didn't know what I was going to cook until I got to Mr Waite and Mr Rose's grocers. Knowing that Battey is allergic to nuts ruled out the pasta options on an evening when I felt like pesto. I had a look in the fish section and spotted some lovely looking cod, sustainably caught and the best thing to come out of Iceland since Benni, Bjorn, Agnetha, and ...... Um, ABBA.
Armed with my cod, I made haste to the Seven Sisters Road and bought a bunch each of basil, mint, dill and flat leaf parsley. Whizzed in the food processor with fresh but tiring bread and a sploosh of olive oil I soon had a herb crust to top the cod with. (I started this off in a frying pan, finishing it off in the oven and then flashing it under the grill to brown the crust. It's always worth having a metal-handled frying pan, both for this and Tarte Tatin.)
The cod was accompanied by boiled potatoes, fennel, braised and browned, and steamed sugar snap peas with garlic and oyster sauce. The meal was delicious, and afterwards I stretched out on the sofa next door to regather my strength for making the pancakes to come.
I stretched out, and Tigger hopped up next to me. We both stretched out.
You can guess what happened next....
Me Too!
They woke me up just as our Battey Moo was leaving.
Maybe pancakes for Sunday lunch instead?
ttttttgggggggggggggyyyyyyyyyyy
(You may find this difficult to believe but Tigger climbed up on my lap whilst I was writing the post above, then he stood with one paw on the keyboard and wrote his name? I know the letters are next to each other on the keyboard, but WEIRD. I think he wants his own blog....)
5 comments:
Phantom Towers. I like that, it really made me larf. Good to have you back blogging.
AMalee
Echoing Amalee... welcome back :)
Hmmm... are pine nuts actually 'nuts' as such??
By the way, I heard that this year Ripon had cancelled it's 600 year old traditional Pancake Day races in case someone slipped on the cobbles. Surely this is cobblers?
How often have people slipped and injured themselves in past years... and how many have sued??
If true the country is going to the dogs!!
I love pancakes me... bloody diet :(
Many Thanks as always for your kind remarks. It's been the usual working and getting home exhausted routine.
Chinese New Year Resolution? Must Blog More Often.
Just an update on Welsh Dog's comment.
We were at Kew Gardens on Monday for Angela's Birthday. They had a new mediterranean garden and sure enough they had a number of Stone Pines, the tree whose cones give us Pine "Nuts". So yes, cobber, they are actually seeds, not nuts.
This is a long way back I know, but the wife (who also reads your most excellent blog) mentioned your assertion that Abba arose from the sunny shores of Iceland!
Shome mishtake shurely... unless the Swedish nation was absorbed into a version of a 'Greater' Norseland' and nobody told them?? :D
If you think this is irritating... imagine living with her! :D
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