Things that strike me

I am in apple crumble mode and one of my mates, Darren, came up with the tagline iCrumble, so here is my recipe.

First, go to Tesco and buy:

• some cooking apples. A bag of six is generally good for a reasonable apple crumble
• one orange.

Make sure before you leave for Tesco that you have an adequate supply of a) flour, b) sugar c) butter and d) ground cinnamon or some such. The word adequate is analagous to “some”.

Go home.

Put water into a reasonable sized pot and then put on The Pretender by the Foo Fighters, or Piano Concert Number 2 by Rachmaninov. I have thoughtfully provided links. Lay pot to one side, get a knife and start peeling the apples. As you peel them, chop the edible bits into little slices and throw into the pot. Do this for half a dozen apples or so.

Then grate the rind off the orange and put to one side. Juice the orange. Drain the apples.

Dump the orange rind in on top of the apples which you will have left in the pot minus water. Pour the orange juice in on top and then add a glob of butter around a centimeter in length from the end of a pound of butter. Put on hob over a mild heat and allow to stew and add about 2 tablespoons of sugar. Surreptitiously check what Nigella Lawson says and ignore her wholesale when you realise that she can be quite masochistic. Three minutes is not long enough to make the crumble. Leave it on a lowish heat, stirring occasionally while you attempt to make the crumble by hand because apparently that’s therapeutic.

Initially use Nigella’s measurements, realise that they make pastry not crumble and add more flour. I think I use about 150g flour, about 80g butter and about 150g of caster sugar plus a table spoon of brown/muscovado/light muscovada/whatever you’ve got sugar plus a reasonable whack of cinnamon. Try to turn into crumble. Add more flour and sugar if it looks like the butter is winning the battle. When you have crumble, set it to one side and go get the ceramic dish you bought for half nothing in TK Maxx 19 months ago but have not yet used but are using this time because you lent the other oen to someone on Saturday night and pour the apple mixture in. It should be quite gloopy and soft.

Cover with the crumble and put into an oven which of course you remembered to heat to 200 deg C before you started all this.

Thirty minutes later: iCrumble.