recipe

Saved by the Scones

Recipes

This week my workload had a bit of an upward spike, that sort of 17-hours-in-front-of-a-laptop type spike. Tuesday was the worst, I finally finished my shift at 2am on Wednesday morning and crawled under a duvet on the sofa in the office as I didn’t want to wake my housemates. Even though I’m pretty certain there isn’t a cricket bat in our house my sleepy logic made me believe that if I was heard climbing the stairs at that hour someone would be sure to mistake me for a burglar and hit me over the head with one.

The rest of Wednesday was almost a total right-off. I’m sure when I was a student I could have only a handful of hours sleep and still be functional the next day but not now, stringing a sentence together yesterday was a serious chore. What happened?!

In the end the only thing to revive me from my zombie-like state were a couple of scones and a double espresso.

I had a just about enough energy to whip these up and it was well worth it. I had some clotted cream left over from a recipe photoshoot at the weekend (as you do) so it would have been rude not to use it up!

Oaty Scones

(makes about 12)

350g strong white bread flour
50g of rolled oats
pinch of salt
3 teaspoons of baking powder
2 dessertspoons of golden caster sugar
85g of butter
juice of half a lemon
180ml milk
2 eggs

1) Preheat the oven to 200°C and line a large baking sheet with a piece of greaseproof paper

2) Stir the dry ingredients together in a bowl and then rub in the butter until it looks like fine breadcrumbs

3) Add the lemon juice to the milk. Add the eggs to the milk mixture and stir with a fork to combine.

4) Pour the liquid ingredients onto the dry ones and stir together

5) Tip out onto a well floured surface and knead just briefly to make sure all the ingredients are combined. Flatten the dough, just with your hands is fine (I couldn’t be bothered with a rolling pin yesterday) it should be about 4-5cm thick then cut into circles with a cutter. You don’t have to make them round, my mum used to cut them into triangles just with a table knife, there was something very clever and mathematical about her reasons for doing this but I just remember them being yummy.

6) Put them on the prepared baking sheet, evenly spaced (they expand a little bit) and bake for about 10mins

7) Serve warm with jam and clotted cream!

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Since uploading this photo on facebook & twitter a debate has started as to whether the cream goes first or the jam, I’m all for the jam going first as it keeps the cream nice and cold on the warm scone but other people fiercely disagree with me stating that the cream should be first. What do you think?

Total London

Events, Recipes

I use greek yoghurt loads, it’s a fantastic hero of an ingredient which I use in all sorts of recipes…off the top of my head, right now, I can think of about 10 different recipes. I think that’s pretty good. Well, turns out 10 is rubbish; the people at Total Greek Yoghurt have come up with 1000 recipes using their product! Hats off indeed as they launched 1000 ways to love your total this week.

Greek yoghurt panna cotta

As well as uploading all these ideas to their website they had time to host an event at La Cucina Caldesi (which is a lovely little italian cookery school in central London). I was very excited to be invited and Chef Paul Merrett expertly guided us through making Salmon Rillette, Butternut Squash Tagine and a Semolina Sponge cake.


Salmon Rillettes

Tagine

Semolina Sponge

So, Total have come up with 1000 recipes, arranged an event (where I got to cook, eat, drink wine at lunch time and hang out with super food bloggers like Filipa Kay, Phillipa Moore, Alice Langley and Lynne Clark) and they gave me a whole bunch of yoghurt to take home….I feel utterly lazy in comparison.

To pay homage to my Total experience I decided to come up with a really special dish, something pretty to celebrate their efforts and a recipe not already covered by the 1000 ways campaign; tricky stuff. Scoffing one of the complimentary honey split pots I had a sugary epiphany and an idea started simmering in my brain.


My Total Dessert

Apricots poached in a cardamon syrup with crushed pistachios & honey, greek yoghurt quenelles (oh I love a quenelle) in a walnut shortbread sandwich with turkish delight pieces. (serves 2 with leftover shortbread!)

Ingredients
1 tablespoon of coarsely ground pistachios (plus a little extra for decoration)
1 Total Greek Yoghurt Honey split pot
1 quantity of Delia Smith’s Walnut Shortbread dough (see here for recipe)
10-12 whole cardamom pods
1 orange
200g of caster sugar
6 fresh apricots
1 teaspoon of rose water
icing sugar
2 pieces of rose turkish delight
Method
1) Mix the coarsely ground pistachios with the honey from the split pot & set aside.
2) Make the shortbread dough following the instructions in Delia’s recipe, roll out and cut into rectangles (approx 12cm x 5cm) and place on a baking sheet lined with a sheet of baking paper. Bake for 15-20 minutes, they should just start to turn pale golden at the edges. Leave them to cool on the tray until you’re ready to assemble the dish.

3) To poach the apricots heat 300ml of water, the cardamom pods (slightly bashed to release their fragrance) juice & zest of one small orange and the caster sugar. Bring to the boil then carefully add the whole apricots. Cover them with a piece of baking paper and let simmer for 8 minutes.
Gently remove the apricots from the syrup and set aside to cool.
Allow the syrup to reduce for another 8-10 minutes then turn off the heat and add the rose water.

4) When the apricots are cool enough to handle gently split them in half and remove the stone, cut each half into 3 wedges
Dredge 2 pieces of the shortbread with icing sugar on one side, these will become the lids.

5) Lay an un-sugar dusted piece of shortbread on each plate. Top with teaspoon quenelles of the yoghurt with small amounts of the pistachio honey in between.

6) Then add a layer of the apricot wedges, a little of the fragrant syrup, more pistachio honey and then the sugared lid.

7) Decorate the plate with left over pistachio-honey mixture, small pieces of the turkish delight (cut up using scissors) and drizzle the plate with a bit more of the cardamom syrup.