Marmite and Cheddar Palmiers

The smell hits the hallway before anyone reaches the kitchen. Warm butter, toasted cheese, that particular savoury depth that only Marmite brings. It's the smell of a Friday evening when someone is coming for dinner and you need something ready the moment they walk through the door.

These are not complicated. A sheet of puff pastry, a thin spread of Marmite, a scattering of good cheddar, rolled inward from both sides and sliced into spirals. Twenty minutes in a hot oven and you've got a plate of golden, flaky, salty, cheesy things that people will eat standing up in the kitchen before you've taken their coats. That's the whole idea. Something warm on a plate, offered without fuss, while the real cooking is still happening behind you on the hob.

I make these more often than I should probably admit. They're in the notebook several times, always with the same note: "gone in ten minutes." A recipe is a conversation, not a contract, and this one barely qualifies as a recipe at all. Four ingredients. One good tray. The trick, if there is one, is good pastry made with real butter and a cheddar with enough character to hold its own against the Marmite. Everything else takes care of itself.

You either love Marmite or you are wrong. I've never found a middle ground worth occupying.