Clafouti aka Trip Down Memory Lane 6WS

So last night I was in the mood for some sort of pancake thing for supper, made one of the oatmeal ones, added in golden raisins and blueberries, tasted very good, but didn't turn over well on the pan, so it came out a bit freeform.

Today, bored because after I made a quick trip to the farmers' market, it was already hot at 9 a.m., air not breathable out there, not really up to going out again in heat at high nineties and humid, I thought hm.  How to rescue the rest of the pancake batter?  all good ingredients, but could it do well in the oven instead?  This is how I end up putting the oven on in ridiculous weather, sheer need to do something interesting. I had already played with tshirts and dye, and will duly bang on about that in my art blog.

Anyway, in the midst of this food thinking, I suddenly realized I was talking about clafouti, an old favorite of mine from years ago, from earliest perusing of Julia Child, whose original book I still have with a funny inscription from Handsome Partner.  

He gave it to me in early marriage, even though he only really wanted to eat my curries, mostly from the Bill Veach book.

Anyway, I thought, ah, I have plums galore in the freezer, and this will work lovely. Clafouti is a kind of fruit flan thing with a pancake batter poured over raw fruit, baked in a moderate oven.  Works for breakfast, or teatime.  Or anytime, really, it's very good. Also much simpler than Julia would have you think. True of many of her recipes, in fact.

So I went online and saw Julia's recipe, and thought, no, self, self, this is where you get the original book out and really revisit it.  And found there, in the original book, unhandled for decades, was a little slip of scotch tape marking the clafouti page.

So I accidentally took a nice stroll down memory lane, and ended up with a very good clafouti instead of a moderate oatmeal pancake.  

Right after it came out of the oven, my friend who feeds me her Indian recipes all the time came over with some offerings, and I explained I couldn't give her clafouti until the whole thing had cooled down. 

She's off on a temple visit, will be back Sunday or Monday.  So she booked some clafouti for then, and went off very happy with the exchange, having left me special squash (yes, I know) and chickpeas, all cooked her own way.  Tonight's supper.