Cherry Stir'n'Cook

OK, just a brief story to start with: my Grandfather, having lived through two World Wars with rationing and also otherwise always having had to make do, lived frugally, ate with moderation, and usually declined seconds, saying he had better stop as he was "still feeling well". However, with this dish I remember him once taking so many helpings that my little sister, always a bit of a slow eater, seeing her potential share disappearing fast, asked, "Grandad, are you still feeling well?", to which he replied“No but I don't care.”

Cherry Stir’n’Cook is basically a kind of pancake with plain flour and lots of cherries in it.

What you need:

• 4 eggs
• 350 ml milk
• 200 g (spelt) flour (a bit less if using wheat because spelt absorbs liquid differently)
• 1 pinch of salt
• 2 (about) tablespoons of vanilla sugar (see below how to make your own)
• 500g (at least) washed and de-stalked cherries (leave the stones)
• butter for frying

What you do:

1.  Mix the ingredients (except for the cherries and, obviously, the butter) to get a thick but still liquid batter.
2. Add the cherries. If a bit of juice leaks out of the holes where the stalks were, all the better.
3. Ideally leave for about 20 to 30 minutes to give the flour time to blend with the other ingredients.
4. Preheat the oven to about 150°C.
5. Pour enough batter with cherries into a well-buttered frying pan and cook on one side until the top of the pancake is no longer runny. You can press the cherries down a bit with a spatula while this is going on to release some of the juice into the batter.

6. Then flip over and really press down the spatula to release more juice.
7. While the other side cooks, break up the pancake and stir the pieces and the cherries to mix both well.
   
   
   
8. Pour into an ovenproof dish, sprinkle with a bit of sugar and transfer to the hot oven.

9. Proceed the same way until all the batter and the cherries are used up.

Serve hot or warm but remember, hot cherries remain hot for a long time.

Oh and if you wash the cherry stones they can be sown into a small cushion, which, in winter when warmed on a stove or oven retains the temperature like, but doesn’t get as unpleasantly cold as a hot water bottle.

Vanilla sugar: fill a jar with sugar and two twisted vanilla pods, shake and leave for at least a couple of months; refill as you use it up, shaking occasionally. It beasts the industrially flavoured rubbish by miles in taste and price!)