Lo, your own crumpet
I have come to crumpets very late in life.
While the store-bought variety has been in pantries my whole life, I have never been drawn to them, until I had to make some for a comparative yeast batter exercise. Now I have a fascination for them. For most of my professional cooking life the batters of choice have been a yeasted blini batter lightened with egg whites, various forms of pancake batter – some lightened with whipped egg white and some not – and, of course, crepe batter.
The crumpet batter is the favoured recipe for a moment. I am enamoured with its yeastiness and the transformation it goes through from freshly cooked to toasted the next day. I am also delighted the homemade version sits equally comfortably with butter and honey as it does with smoked trout and crème fraîche. What makes them so delicious is the melting toppings filling the surface holes left by the released air.
For something made from such a simple batter, there is a bit of trial and error when cooking the crumpets to get them just right. Much will depend on your pan and your heat source.
Trout fishing is almost as curious a sport as the perfecting of a golden crumpet. While hot-smoked rainbow trout is readily available to buy, it is so much nicer done at home. There really is something incomparable about a freshly caught fish that is lightly brined and then hot smoked. It is also a great beginner’s exercise in understanding hot smoking.
This combination of crumpet and hotsmoked trout makes me yearn to escape to a tiny mountain shack on a river somewhere, where the art of “making breakfast” turns into a whole-day pursuit.