Ray Kershaw likes his hot and oozing ...
Now let's see. Flour. A pinch of salt. A few eggs. Drop of beer .... Yes. There's something cheerful about pancakes. A bit like champagne, but sort of homely, not as frivolous. I'm not talking about designer-label crepes flambed in Cointreau, but the humbler, cosier, Shrove Tuesday variety that like the first unfrozen pipe leak heralds the beginning of the end of winter gloom.
They belong to that illustrious repertoire of dishes - now sadly shrunken - that punctuate the year more personally, than obscure tiltings of the planet. Like oases of normality - frequently of sanity - in that frozen TV dinner that's now modern family life
They're collectively distinguished by reappearing each time like an inspired new creation - the kind you can't imagine why - like the proverbial Christmas pudding - you haven't eaten for so long. And even those you can't stand, when they're family traditions, they'll form a culinary chronical stretching back to infancy of memories you can taste.
Ask any immigrant what they miss most and they'll drool over dishes they once spurned at their mum's. And if your partner hails from foreign parts, as does mine, you share a schizophrenic kitchen. My wife's Danish, so in our house it's always Christmas dinner with rice pudding, boiled cod on New Year's Eve. But that's marital equality, for better or for worse. She been, after all, enduring for years the fumes of vinegar on chips.
I've not tasted it for years, but I can't see a tin of salmon without recalling afternoons when relatives I hardly knew came for Sunday tea. Is there anyone left who has a meal called Sunday tea? Of course, there may already be by now several generations savouring with nostalgia Chinese takeaways.
So, Pancake Day on Tuesday. A few more days to go to the annual respite from all those pre-dawn worries about what to have for dinner. My mouth's watering already. I'll be busy with the mixing bowl doing my parental best to bequeath the technique to the next generation.
At my age, I've come to prefer them with lemon. Hmm.. Perhaps a few with calvados. But definitely some oozing hot treacle like I used to get at home. There'll be a chorus of voices from my wife and my son - and he's 25 - can't we have them again soon? Or then again, maybe not. Well, mine usually stick.
