A Locally Grown Meal - Leon Makes Crumpets

Leon Dawkins, the cook of the The Locally Grown Meal, had just a few guidelines to follow for making this special meal: He was to make appetizers plus the main course using the locally grown items I would bring him.

Well, Leon, being Leon, of course took it to the next level. He added a mid-afternoon tea. Correction: It was actually Tea and Crumpets!

How very British that sounds and exciting. I have never eaten a crumpet. I have read about it in books of my youth, but never ate one. Here was my chance!

Leon and his wife, Lori, know I am a coffee gal, so I had coffee, while Lori made tea using her new Chantal Whistling Tea Kettle. More on that later.

Leon’s thoughts on CRUMPETS!!!!!!

A crumpet is something that I had never made, let alone that I never even knew what they really were. A crumpet is a fried batter that looks somewhere between an English muffin and a pancake. The taste is more like a pancake. This recipe requires making a batter that is very easy to make. If you have a griddle, it may be easier to control the cooking surface heat. I think if you have made pancakes, you can master these quite easily. So here’s how I made them. - Leon

Ingredients for about 8 crumpets:

1 c. all purpose flour

3/4 c. warm tap water

1/4 tsp table salt

1/2 tsp white sugar

1 tsp baking powder

The Yeast Mix

1 tsp dry active yeast

1 tbsp warm water

The Pan

2 tbsp light olive oil

The cooking method

The batter -

In a mixing bowl, add the 1 c. flour, the 3/4 c warm tap water and the 1/2 tsp salt and hand mix with a whisk for 2 minutes.

In a smaller bowl, add 1 tbsp warm water and 1 tsp of the dry active yeast. Mix until yeast is totally dissolved. When mixed, add the yeast/water mixture to the sugar, salt, flour, baking flour bowl. Mix all together for about 1 minute.

Float the mixing bowl with the batter mixture, in very warm water and cover with a dish towel. This will take 15 to 30 minutes, but it’s ready when you see bubbles on the surface of the batter.

The Griddle

This will require crumpet rings or some sort of round cookie cutter or even egg rings will work.

Spray the cooking rings with cooking spray and make sure the griddle or pan are well greased with oil or butter. Set the rings on the griddle or pan surface. Turn the burner to medium high. Stove tops may vary so you will need to test run a few batches.

Add enough batter to each ring to fill to about 1/2 inch deep. Cook until you see bubbles on the surface of the batter. When the batter is no longer wet looking, slide off the rings and flip over for only about a minute.

Goes great with tea or coffee.

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Of Local Connections

The crumpets were served with Millerville Co-op Creamery butter (Millerville Butter is featured in another Local Growers post. Please check it out. Great local butter!) and with three different jams. Leon made a fig and orange zest (yum) and there was apricot and Dave and Janet’s raspberry jam. Dave and Janet are vendors at the Fergus Falls Farmers Market. Besides a variety of potatoes, squash and other vegetables they sell during the summer, they also sell raspberries. What they don’t use for themselves or sell at the market, Janet makes into a wonderful jam!

I was going to feature a picture of Dave and Janet’s Raspberry Jam, but when I got home, Hubby had consumed it all! Okay, I started the jar, but, as I said, when I got home, it was GONE! He had even washed it!

That’s what I get, I guess, when I am gone for the weekend watching one set of grands.

But I’d purchased two jars of the jam when I was sourcing items for our meal. So I asked Lori to send me a picture of it.

She did.

It’s to the right.

What a testament to the great taste of this jam!

As we ate our crumpets, Leon talked about other local connections to meal prep. Swany White Flour is milled at Freeport, MN, he said, and would be a great flour for crumpets. When he mentioned Swany White Flour, my heart sang! This has been THEE flour my sister has used when making lefse. She got hooked on Swany White form our mom, Martha, who swore by it for her lefse.

I soon realized the singing was not just my heart due to the Swany flour reference, but also that wonderful teakettle Lori purchased.

Ahhhh, the Chantal Whistling Teakettle. Now this teakettle not only whistles, it whistles in harmony! Cool. (I gotta get me one of those! I am sure Hubby would be thrilled!)

So, after singing a few bars with the teakettle, Lori laid out the spread of Leon’s crumpets with Dave and Janet’s raspberry jam, tea and, for me, coffee. I am a coffee drinker.

But even the coffee had a local connection, Lori and Leon said. The blend was roasted by Stumbeano’s Coffee Roasters of Fergus Falls, MN. And this blend was also named for a local man, Gus Comstock, who drank 85 cups of coffee in seven hours!

“Fergus Falls native Gus Comstock achieved a level of fame unequaled in the history of Otter Tail County. What he did required a degree of endurance other people can only dream about.

After his military service Comstock was a lost soul. He ran a small shoeshine stand, sold pop and ice cream at county fairs and did other odd jobs. None of this satisfied Gus who longed to do something great.

Being a man of large appetites, Comstock decided to put this talent to good use.

At 7 a.m. on Jan. 11, 1927, he walked into the Kaddatz Hotel with the intent of setting a new world coffee drinking record. Using regular restaurant coffee in 8 ounce cups, Gus downed 15 in the first hour. For each cup consumed, a slip of paper was placed in a sealed box. Shortly after noon, Dr. Theurer checked Gus and declared him normal except for a slight increase in temperature.

Methodically Gus drank cup after cup until 2:10 p.m. when he stopped. The final count was 85 cups of coffee in six hours — a new world record.

His feat was carried in papers throughout the United States and Europe. Gus finally had his fame; he had accomplished something no one else in the world had.

The record defined “Guzzling Gus” for the rest of his life. In 1939, he attempted to establish milk and beer drinking records.” Story from the Fergus Falls Daily Journal

I don’t know if I could consume 85 cups and only have a slight increase in temperature, but I love a good coffee drinking story!

This was the start of our Locally Grown Meal. Next recipes and the stories of the appetizers and main course.

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Keep it local!