Flash in the pan

SHROVE Tuesday’s here again. Pancake Day always brings back memories of happy, boisterous childhood parties: – mummy cooking stacks of thin lacy pancakes, struggling to keep up with the demand, while we squabbled about whose turn it was to have the next one off the pan.

We brushed the hot pancakes with melted butter, scattered them with caster sugar and sprinkled lemon juice over the top before rolling them up.

There were nine of us we each had a different system, some cut them into cartwheels and ate them sparingly, others gobbled them down and tried to jump the queue for the next one. We were single-minded in our devotion to lemon pancakes, we never contemplated jam or chocolate spread. Tapenade or pesto or sun-dried tomatoes hadn't been heard of at that stage. In fact, it didn't occur to us that pancakes could also be savoury. Now we do all kinds of variations on the theme, different textures, size and shape, both sweet and savoury.