Me and crumpets have got history. My first attempt was a complete failure; the batter was wrong, the cooking was wrong, the finished product was wronger than wrong. I ended up with a pile of stodgy, under cooked discs, which lacked that most distinguishing and important of crumpet features – holes. If they don’t have holes then the butter can’t get in. Enough said.

My second attempt was more promising, mostly down to the good advice of Bea, who suggested I use a different recipe and make a couple of tweaks. The batter this time was spectacularly gaseous and I was effervescent with excitement. The bubbles in the batter rise to the top during cooking and burst, leaving that essential network of butter channels. I thought I’d nailed it. Well, I thought Bea had nailed it.

They did produce some holes – an improvement on the first attempt, but still not good enough. Bea was flummoxed and I was inconsolable until some helpful soul ventured to ask the rather personal question, “how old is your bicarbonate of soda?” I hung my head in shame and squeaked out the admission: “don’t really know; at least two years, probably three, maybe four.”

That was back in July. Despite being certain that this embarrassing discovery marked the end of my crumpet woes, I just couldn’t face making them again until now. The thought of a third failure too traumatic perhaps? Well, it almost happened again; I forgot to put the bicarb in. I honestly couldn’t believe what was happening, but through the mist of disappointment and dizzying fog of frustration I just slung it in half an hour late, re-mixed, re-covered and hoped for the best.

And…it worked. Hallelujah! They were spongy and light, with more holes than an OJ Simpson alibi. Finally, a recipe for crumps that I can rely on, and of course I’ve learned a thing or two about making them along the way. Here it is:

1. Using rings is a right faff. You have to oil them repeatedly (until you can’t be bothered any more) and lift them up using tongs while simultaneously trying to release the crumpet with a knife. Next time I’ll freestyle.

2. Making crumpets takes time. If you try and rush them (by turning up the heat) they will burn on the bottom before they are cooked on top.

3. Keeping bicarbonate of soda for longer than two years is skanky and pointless.

4. I’ve made every single mistake in the book so you don’t have to.

Crumpets

This mix makes about 14 crumpets. Just think, if you remember to put your bicarb in at the right time, your crumps could have even more holes than mine! (Edit: Miss Marmite Lover has made a brilliant suggestion in the comments: she adds more bicarb than the recipe suggests. Obvious now I think about it. This is a brilliant way to get more holes).

360g plain flour
2 teaspoons active dry yeast
580ml warm milk
1.5 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

Combine the yeast and sugar with 250ml of the warm milk in a bowl. Do make sure the milk is just warm, not hot. Cover and leave in a warm place to rest for about 10 minutes until frothy.

Sift the flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda into another bowl then make a well in the centre and add the yeasty mix along with the rest of the warm milk. Mix this to a thick batter using a wooden spoon. Cover it with cling film and allow to rest in a warm place for about an hour. The film will rise up as gases build up inside. This is good. The result is an extremely light and aerated batter.

Heat a wide pan over a medium heat then turn down fairly low. Use a piece of kitchen paper to wipe vegetable or groundnut oil over the base so it is coated in a nice film. Do the same to your rings if using or you can freestyle (i.e drop blobs of batter into the pan). Allow to cook for about 8 minutes or so or until they appear ‘dry’ on top, then flip them over to toast lightly for a minute on the other side. Remove to a wire rack to cool. Repeat as necessary. They can then be re-heated under a grill to crisp up more before serving. Spread liberally with butter and then rejoice in their holey juiciness.

A huge thank you once again to Bea. Without your advice I may never have lifted myself from the depths of crumpy despair.

My favourite snack for approximately the last ten years has been a soft boiled egg with anchovy soldiers. Fact. That’s a long time in service; I feel I’ve earned my stripes and the right to experiment with something that is nigh-on perfect already. It’s time to take things to the next level.

A baked egg has the added indulgence of butter and cream and of course, increased size on its side. The spinach in this one was almost a bridge too far but I got away with it, no doubt due to my lengthy service to the cause. The anchovy soldiers need no introduction – just don’t be shy with the butter.

Baked Eggs with Anchovy Soldiers

Personally, I won’t bother putting the spinach in next time but if you do fancy it, just wilt it down in a pan first, then squeeze out as much moisture as you can before adding to the ramekin, otherwise it will be watery.

Butter
Single cream
One large egg
Salt and pepper

Add your spinach to the ramekin if using and then carefully break in the egg. Add a splash of cream plus a little dab of butter on top and season well with pepper. You may want to add a little salt but remember those anchovies. Bake in the centre of a 180C oven until the egg is just cooked. Serve with toasty dippers slathered generously in butter and topped with as much anchovy fillet as you dare. Sometimes I use white pepper instead of black. Rock ‘n roll.

I rarely come across fresh anchovies, so when I spotted some in a local fishmonger (Moxon’s in East Dulwich), I greedily snapped up three big handfuls, cheap as chips at £2.something for the lot. Being an anchovy obsessive, the thought of eating them in a new way was almost a bit much for me; I couldn’t get home fast enough. “You can cook them just like whitebait” the fishmonger advised. “Really?” I countered, “their heads look a bit big to eat.” I think we must have had our wires crossed somewhere because every recipe I looked at told me to remove the heads and gut them. In the end, I turned to that fount of all food knowledge, The Larousse Gastronomique and it didn’t let me down, providing  clear instructions on how to clean and fry my most favourite of fishes. We were off.

The obvious accompaniment to the anchovies would be tartare sauce, but I’d picked up a jar of preserved limes recently at one of my best-loved local stores – Khan’s in Peckham. The sign above the shop never fails to make me smile: “walk in and see the variety”. Thing is, Khan really ain’t kidding. If he sells beans then he sells every kind of bean you can think of. Same with oils, halloumi style cheeses and, to my sheer delight, pickles. So many different kinds of pickles. I had to check myself and make a pact to buy only one pickle a month, otherwise things could get very out of hand. As you move towards the back of the store though, aside from meeting with every kind of dried pulse imaginable, things start to get a bit weird. I’ve never been right back there and I’m not sure if I might get swallowed up, into some kind of Peckham Narnia. One day, one day.

Anyway, the limes. They basically taste like the lime pickle you would eat with a curry, but milder and without the heavy spicing, so I decided to use them in place of lemon juice or other acidity in my mayo. I also chucked in a birds-eye chilli from the garden, a good fat clove of garlic and some parsley found lying around looking a bit sorry for itself. A bit of elbow grease and light chopping later, and a fine dipping sauce was created.

The anchovies were beheaded and gutted before being gently wiped clean. The Larousse instructs not to wash the anchovies, as their flesh is very delicate; I found this to be very sound advice. They were then dipped in milk followed by seasoned flour and fried until golden brown. We piled them high on plates, squeezed a generous amount of lemon on top and dunked and dipped into the spicy lime mayo. They didn’t last long. Crispy yet large enough to retain a bit of soft flesh inside, they were like whitebait but ten times better, what with being anchovies and all. We devoured the lot in minutes and I’m actively seeking out my next fix.

I now have a large jar of limes of course which I’ve been steadily working my way through. I’ve had success with a piquant dressing for halloumi mixed with some chilli and mint and I’ve plans for a stuffed mackerel this weekend which will incorporate them also. After all, I need to get through the jar just so I can justify buying my next pickle.

Deep Fried Anchovies

First, prepare your anchovies by cutting off their heads and removing the guts. It is easiest to remove the guts with your fingers. Do not try to do this under the tap as the flesh of the anchovy is very delicate, and will break. Chris also had some success twisting the head off, in which case the guts tend to come out at the same time. Just get in there and give it a go I say. If they need further cleaning, give them a little wipe.

Begin heating some oil for deep frying. Tip some plain flour onto a plate and season generously with salt and pepper (fresh anchovies are not as salty as the canned ones) and also have a bowl of milk to hand. Dip each anchovy first into the milk then roll in the seasoned flour. Deep fry, in small batches and drain on kitchen paper. Pile high and serve with the spicy mayo.

Spicy, Preserved Lime Mayo

Take two egg yolks and a fat garlic clove crushed with a pinch of salt. Mix these together in a bowl. Next take about 250-300ml oil of your choice (I often use light olive oil (it needs to be light) but I sometimes also use groundnut, as it is flavourless) and begin adding this to the yolk mixture, a few drops at a time, whisking each few drops in until they are fully incorporated before adding the next. Then, once the mayonnaise starts to get a bit thicker, start adding the oil a little bit faster, whisking all the time. Keep adding oil to the desired thickness (if you think my mayo looks a bit thin in the above picture then you are right, I ran out of oil).

If the mayonnaise splits, take a fresh egg yolk (in a fresh bowl) and begin adding the split mixture to it, a little at a time, as you did with the oil. This should bring it back.

Stir in some chopped parsley, chilli, 1 finely diced pickled lime and black pepper and add more salt if necessary. You could just use some lime or lemon juice or something like white wine vinegar if you do not have the pickled lime.

[Edit: to save any more of you e-mailing me - I've called it 'pan' rather than 'pain' because google told me so. I don't know why either.]

Firstly I would like to express my irritation with the man who persuaded me to buy these tomatoes which he promised would be sweet and delicious, even in UK spring time. Curiosity got the better of me and I caved. Of course, they didn’t taste of much. I called him a name which I shall not repeat here – not to his face of course, I made sure to complain behind his back like a good British customer.

You may have noticed that I haven’t posted about a sandwich I’ve found in the city for a while. That’s because March was a cursed month as far as the sammich was concerned (my partner in sandwich crime Jonathan had similar problems). I successfully tracked down many promising candidates but the execution was always foiled at the last minute. For this reason then, I bring you one of my favourite ever sangers, from my own little kitchen – a stand in for March (and probably most of April by the time you get this).

The pan bagnat is a Provençal sandwich, originating from Nice. It traditionally contains a salade niçoise but you can stuff it with practically anything and my slightly crazy version is filled with practically everything that happened to be lurking in my fridge that day. So, you get yourself a nice round loaf, scoop out the middle and then give the inside a good brushing with some garlicky oil.

Then you just need to start layering it up. I had some of those little peppers stuffed with cheese so they went in followed by some cucumber for crunch and then salty anchovies and basil leaves.

I sprinkled a few capers on top of the fishy layer before adding marinated artichokes.

Those fruits masquerading as tomatoes went on next followed by some spring onion shreds and gem lettuce (with hindsight putting the lettuce on top is a silly idea, as it prevents juices from meeting with bread). Then you weigh the whole thing down well in the fridge for a few hours so that the bread soaks up all the lovely juices within (at least on the bottom anyway…).

The bagnat is perfect picnic fare as you just cut it into big, fat wedges and chow down. This is by no means the best I’ve ever made – previous successes have included grilled vegetables, mozzarella, olives and sometimes cured meats. Still, not bad for a fridge job eh? A king among sandwiches and a true flavour explosion.

Is it just me, or does anyone else spend their time in the pub this way? Debating important and potentially life-changing conundrums such as – ‘pork or beef?’ (if you could only eat one for the rest of your life), ‘tomato ketchup or brown sauce?’ (in a bacon sandwich, naturally) and now this – the probability of turning out a decent, oven-baked scotch egg*. Instinct says it can’t be done, but then I started wondering – maybe we should be giving the baking a chance? Just how well could they really hold up against traditionally fried counterparts? There’s only one way to find out for a geek like me.

I used a recipe from Paganum’s food blog, fitting because they also supplied the meat (me gushing about them here) and followed the basic gist, swapping parsley for sage and employing a cheeky little clingfilm method for the assembly.

Lay out a meaty bed for your hard-boiled egg on a piece of clingfilm.

Plonk the egg in the middle.

Gather up the sides and squish the meat around the egg.

And, they are ready for a good egging and crumbing…

…like so. Except, FAIL #1: I didn’t have enough oil for deep frying and so had to shallow fry and cross my fingers instead. They looked great, an excellent golden colour, so I carefully spooned them out to let the excess oil drain off.

Then an excruciating wait (at least three minutes), before I finally gave in and cut one open. Only to find…raw sausagemeat – oops. I made the sausage layer too thick, leaving it still uncooked in places. Either that, or the shallow frying method failed me. Probably a bit of both (FAIL #2).

So, they go in the oven with the baked eggs anyway, which basically ruins the experiment. In the interests of all being right and good however, here’s the results.

As you can see, the oven baked egg looks anaemic in comparison to the fried and it doesn’t have the same calibre of ‘crust’. That said, those baked eggs are pretty damn crispy anyway (I turned them during cooking) – still immensely satisfying. And inside?

The baked is on the right in this picture and I can honestly say, no difference whatsoever within the crumb – both as perfectly juicy and delicious as the other. So all things considered, there ain’t much between them but you’re going to go for the fried, right? Right. Because the golden crunch is important dammit! All of which means that here we have yet another example of why you don’t bother making a low fat version of a high fat snack. It’s never going to be the same, you’re missing the point.

And so what advice can I actually pass on after all that fuss? Don’t eat three scotch eggs all to yourself, that’s what. Not all in the space of an hour anyway. The after effects are not desirable and include nausea, guilt and an extra inch on the waistline. On the upside, the taste and texture is out of this world – a totally different experience to those supermarket fakes – yucky egg mayonnaise inside grey, textureless flesh (God knows what that’s made from), and don’t forget the suspiciously hued crumb.

Next time, I’ll either stick with the frying or try misting the baked eggs with oil to brown them up more. I’ll also be having another bash at making home made salad cream to go with them, although I won’t be using this recipe, which needed so much adjustment on my part, it’s too complicated to pass on.

In the meantime, Chris has made some pork and apple ’sausages’ with the leftover meat, which will later be transformed (I am told), into a toad in the hole, with onion gravy.  Considering Chris’s gift for making perfect Yorkshire puddings, this is a very exciting prospect for my tummy – not to mention perfectly suited to the unusual winter weather!

* Yes I realise all three of those examples involve pork.