When it just doesn't make sense

The rhubarb SugaLu and I bought on Saturday inspired Sunday evenings dinner. I decided a roast pork with crackling and some "golden roast potatoes" made from kipflers that Elliot adores and roast pumpkin, red onion, garlic, carrots and sweet potato. For the rhubarb I searched high and low for the best recipe for a apple and rhubarb crumble to serve with custard and icecream.

I read several recipes for the crumble and the one I was most impressed with is from Phillip Johnson's Ecco 2 cookbook. I have always loved dining at Ecco it is a fabulous bistro and I admire Philip Johnson's use of fresh produce presented quite simply. Over the years I have used many of his recipes too and I have finally realised after yesterdays experience that there are some definite anomalies with his recipes. I recall when making his lemon tart that perhaps it was my fault that there was so much lemon filling and pastry left over as I don't think I was using the exact same tart tin - now I am starting to think twice after the crumble episode.

I decided my crumble would be mostly based on his recipe and I would add some pecan and walnuts as well and instead of raw sugar I opted for brown sugar.

I started getting suspicious when I prepared the apples, 4 of them with half a kilo of sugar and one cup of water. I had to make a caramel first so I thought the sugar should dissolve so I justified half a kilo of sugar to 4 apples and ten stalks of rhubarb in that way.

The crumble is a different story. The first ingredient was 300 grams of coconut - I looked at my coconut and realised that meant an entire packet plus some extra, the rest of the quantities were 300g of crushed digestives, 300g of raw sugar, 200g of almond meal and 100g plain flour and 100g of rolled oats. I think the dry ingredients come to a total of 1.3 kgs of topping along with 250grams of butter. What is more perplexing is that you are instructed to use only a half a centre metre of the crumble over the 4 apples plus rhubarb. Another instruction I query is that if you find the apple acidic (after half a kilo of sugar!) then you can add some more sugar.

(Note: Even though I decided to use half the quantity that was instructed to I still have crumble to spare in my freezer).

While this doesn't prevent me from using Ecco recipes again I now approach them with more trepidation.