ramtops

Potato scones are a doddle. 3-2-1 potato, flour, butter or marg. I usually do 150g of spud, but there was 225g leftover from last night and really, what am I going to do with 3oz of mash? To hell with it, it’s Friday, I used it all.

So – rub flour and marg/butter together to make breadcrumbs. Squish in the mashed potato* to make a dough. You’ll need some milk at this point – somewhere between a dribble and a splash, I guess – just to make the dough more pliable. If you make it too sloppy, don’t worry – just add more flour!

Roll it out into (an approximation) of a circle – the thickness doesn’t matter, really, it only affects the cooking time – and divide into six. You can bake these in a hot oven for 10-12 minutes, but I tend to do them on the gas hob on a cast iron griddle (any heavy bottomed frying pan would do). It uses less energy. Turn them after 5 minutes or so, or when they’re browning and cook the other side. I actually had time to wash up and wipe down the worktops while they were cooking.

Traditionally, these are served with bacon in Ireland, but we just scoff them as is, with lashings^H^H a tiny bit of butter.

*If I have cold potato, unmashed, I tend to bung it all in the food processor, but I did it by hand today.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

Sorry about this, but while I’m experimenting with the new Remoska, there’s going to be a few posts about it :) I ordered the shallow pan for it from Lakeland, along with the recipe book, so I plan to get plenty of use from it (they arrived this morning).

We went to Bridlington today – just because we fancied a bit of seaside, and the weather was so gorgeous, and we had lunch out, so didn’t want a lot for supper. So I decided to make some scones. I always use this Nigella Lawson recipe – it’s pretty much foolproof – and I added a handful of sultanas.

My Remoska recipe book said 20-25 minute for scones, but they needed 28 minutes. And they worked really, really well, so that’s another triumph nailed for my little Czech friend.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

This is a classic Irish recipe – we used to eat them a lot, but sort of forgot about them; I made some for breakfast this morning, and thought I’d share. It’s an ideal way to use up leftover boiled potato, too!

In a food processor, blitz 6oz cold cooked potato, 4oz flour (I always use plain, but self raising would do), and 2oz of butter or marg. Once you have a dough, remove it from the processor and knead a little on a floured work surface.

Now, you can be diligent, roll it out with a rolling pin, and cut the dough into rounds – or you can do what I do, which is to divide the dough into 8, and pat it into rough roundish shapes.

Also, the recipe recommends frying in a little butter on a griddle, but I’m afraid I stick them on a greased baking tray at gas 6 for 15 minutes. And I don’t peel the spuds either :)

These are just utterly delicious straight out of the oven, spread with butter, and also work really well as part of a great British fry up.

If you don’t have a food process, mash the potatoes as is (no milk or butter), rub the fat into the flour and add the spud, then continue with the rolling (or not).

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

I’m getting the hang of this winemaking lark now, and I’m much more confident than I used to be. We did our monthly trip to Makro on Saturday (first time the car had been out for a fortnight!), and they had a 5kg bag of carrots reduced to £2.30. “Wine!”, I thought, and bore the bag home in triumph, along with 96 cans of cat fud and other essentials.

5kgs is a *lot* of carrots, I may tell you, but Pete and I topped and tailed them and chopped them up, and then I boiled them up in my preserving pan (bought from eBay a couple of years ago, and so useful). We had to do it them in two batches. You want the liquor for wine, and the carrots can be repurposed for eating.

I had a little ham hock in the freezer, and I put it in the slow cooker yesterday before I went out. So, in a serendipitous style, I had a load of nice ham stock for soup. One half of the Jordan carrot mountain went through the Magimix and into a big pan with the stock, and that’ll be this week’s soup, or the start thereof. And I have some coriander to go with it, which will be nice.

The other batch of carrot will be liquidised and, somehow, shoehorned into th freezer for another soup. I really can’t get used to living with just one freezer, and it’s always full to bursting, with me wanting to cook still more.

I have a big batch of Gujuerati beef curry in the slow cooker right now, and space will have to be found for that too … I’ll write the recipe up tomorrow.

And there are cheese scones and some cocktail sossidges in the oven for supper …