Twice baked not deconstructed

We have most of the usual food arguments in our home. You know the sort of things, red sauce or brown sauce on fried eggs, eating the skin from a rice pudding, mushy peas or curry sauce with fish and chips, the best way to cook a Yorkshire pudding.

These are universal foodie fracas, but in my family little divides opinion more than crumbles.

My mother’s crumble is a solid impenetrable layer of concrete-like amalgam of butter, flour and sugar. It’s the sort of stuff under which hoodlums get buried in black and white gangster movies. It takes a jackhammer to get to the fruit below. I get indigestion just thinking about it. My partner loves it.

It is preferable though to the modern restaurant penchant for ‘deconstructed’ dishes. I was once served a deconstructed blackberry and apple crumble in a pub on the Wye Valley. The fruit was splattered across the plate like bugs hitting a windscreen and the crumble mixture was scattered around with all the distain of flicked cigarette ash. The chef apparently thought it far to good to pollute with either custard or cream. A food-crime probably, and certainly not a crumble.

It would be easy to believe that the crumble sits alongside the canon of traditional British puddings, but it’s a relative newcomer, not gaining wide popularity until the Second World War when a shortage of pie pastry ingredients gave way to the more economical crumble topping. It is now a firm favourite, being versatile and a great use for so many of our seasonal fruits.

This crumble is ‘twicebaked’, giving an even crisp and crunchy crumble layer, and retains some texture to the fruit. The use of breadcrumbs is both a rationing throwback and adds an extra crunchiness to the crumble. You can use any breadcrumbs – rye bread is especially good. For me, it has to be custard, not cream, for a crumble. But you can argue over that yourselves.

For the record, it has to be brown sauce on fried eggs. Red sauce on eggs is the work of the Devil and transgressors should be banished to the underworld for ever.

Ingredients 130g plain flour 70g breadcrumbs 120g unsalted butter 100g caster sugar Ground nutmeg

3 large sticks rhubarb Method

For the crumble topping, blitz the flour, breadcrumbs, butter, sugar and a teaspoon of nutmeg in a food processor until the texture of fine breadcrumbs. Spread evenly on the baking tray and bake for 20 minutes at 180C. Remove from oven and allow to cool.

Soften the rhubarb in the pan with a good sprinkling of sugar and a teaspoon of nutmeg.

Place the rhubarb mixture in an ovenproof dish. Blitz the cooked topping until the texture of roasted breadcrumbs and spoon over the rhubarb. Bake in the oven at 180C for 20 minutes.

Serve with custard, cream or ice-cream.