Recipes that reminds cooks of home – and a hidden danger of the professional kitchen
We must surely all have a recipe that reminds us of home. A dish that carries more than just memories, but feels steeped in a much-loved place and time. A recipe that is the very essence of what home means to us.
My “home dish” is flapjack. The treat my mother would make for when I came home from school on an autumn afternoon. The thin rectangular biscuits I loved for their smell as much as for their taste. For a reason I have never fathomed, the little tin tray of warm oats, sugar, butter and syrup was called “goo” rather than flapjack. Sometimes it lived up to its name (you almost needed a spoon), other times it was chewy or, if my mother forgot it was in the oven, as crisp and crunchy as a brandy snap. To this day, the smell of warm oats and syrup takes me back to our kitchen, and to my little winceyette pyjamas warming on the rail of the Aga.
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