What is that picture? It is not a Rorschach Test but the bottom of a saucepan that was being used to make sugar syrup to go on top of some buns last week.

Unwisely, it was briefly left unattended and, rather than a sweet coating for the buns turned into a burnt, pitted and very tenacious coating at the bottom of the pan!

What you see in the picture (click it for a link to all four in the series) is after several days of soaking in various solutions and lots of hard scrubbing. We are still not there yet! However, I think it is better to restore this pan than to throw it out; we would doubtless go for a higher quality one but that would be just as susceptible to the same kind of mistake.

Anyway, the poor pan has sentimental value, being one of the first purchases I made at university (from a charity shop, along with an AC/DC t-shirt that has long since fallen apart). It has seen many things cooked; beansprout curries were a favourite back in the day although in more recent years it has seen much more work as a true sauce pan. I hope that, cheap and battered as it is, it has many more years of service ahead of it.

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