Attitude Crumble

I rarely make crumble 'cos when I was just in my first job and I'd just left home at eighteen or so, there was a whole lot of month between salary cheques, 'Brass in Pocket', Chrissie Hynde sang in 1979. I emptied mine and left my brass at the 'Snooty Fox'. 

All to be found in the kitchen at 1 Bridge Cottage, Kearstwick, near Kirkby Lonsdale, was several bags of flour, a lb of butter and a bag of sugar oh and some Schwartz madras curry powder and a bag of sultanas all fare forlorn in it's otherwise bare pantry. In the garden forgotten cabbages installed by a previous tenant thrived, so did a forest of rhubarb. So there I was wondering what to survive on. And with several weeks skint to the end of the month every several weeks, all summer long, those sundries became the diet.

It was great though, Kingfishers swooping the Lune early morning. Debs and I skid lid free whizzing down the lanes on my motorbike. Such halcyon times of youth. There was no stress. No one cared about tomorrow. I remember a party and after everyone had departed I found Jack fast asleep upright in a broom cupboard in the morning. Another time twelve people got in my mini van to come back to mine, pass a very small duchy to the... I got evening jobs in the Whoop, the Snot Box (I served Keith Chegwin bitter shandy, wowsers what a claim to fame - he was playing pool in the pub post 'Swop Shop' filming at Kendal) and the Royal Hotel all at the same time, Behind the bar at different pubs on different nights, they paid me, they fed me. I loved that price to pay, otherwise it was cabbage and crumble for two weeks a month. 

I can make a crumble topping that is as short as shortbread. I can also make cabbage and sultana curry.. You'd love my crumble topping...

So I watch you tube videos on crumbles; this chef puts an egg yolk in the crumble mix, and this cook adds vanilla extract, and another puts the mix under the filling. And this chef adds ginger and cinnamon and salt and cayenne and lemon juice to the filling, And I do too. I feel like a sheep.

And yes it's great, yes it's got attitude, yes it's got flavour. 

Don't do it.

A very good crumble top, with a very good filling is all a crumble is about.

Debs at Kearstwick about 1979