Saturday, November 11, 2006

Drop Scones Drop Scones Originally uploaded by sjroberts. As children we looked forward to autumn and winter Sunday teatimes. There would often be something special and sometimes that would be drop scones. Here's a simple recipe: Ingredients (serves 2-3): 150g of self-raising flour or plain flour with a little baking powder 25g of caster sugar 25ml of golden or maple syrup About 70ml of milk 1 egg Method: Mix all ingredients except for the milk. You don't need an electric mixer - a wooden spoon will be fine. Add the milk a little at a time, while continuing to stir, until the result is a creamy smooth batter that is much thicker than a normal pancake batter. It needs to drop off the spoon easily but not be runny. Heat a little oil or butter in a large heavy frying pan. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into the pan taking care that they don't run together. You will probably be able to cook 4 at once. Fry for a couple of minutes until golden brown, turn over and fry the other side. Eating: Best eaten hot with butter. You can either slice the drop scones through the middle and butter their insides or leave them whole and butter the top. Technorati Tags: recipe, food, pancakes, dropscones 11:55:32 AM    comment []  trackback []

	Monday, October 23, 2006

Hokkaido Soup It's pumpkin time and we bought a lovely Hokkaido hoping to make a small halloween head. The flesh was too firm to carve out a face (the wrong sort of pumpkin I guess). I'm a big fan of pumpkins and immediately started thinking about what to cook with it. I've had good results with pumpkin risotto before but decided this time on a soup. I based the recipe on this with a few alterations. Ingredients (serves 3-4): 1 Hokkaido pumpkin (also called Kabosha) 1 medium onion 2 garlic cloves 0.75-1.0 l vegetable stock A good glug of extra virgin olive oil 0.5 teaspoons of ground cumin Salt and black pepper 100 ml cream (optional) Method: Peel the pumpkin, cut it in half, remove the seeds and chop the flesh into medium sized pieces (roughly 1-2 cm per side) Chop the garlic and onion into coarse pieces Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan and saute the onion and garlic until translucent Add the chopped pumpkin and continue to saute (turning frequently) for a couple of minutes until the olive oil has coated all of the pieces Add enough stock to cover the contents of the saucepan, bring to the boil, cover and simmer for 20 minutes Remove from the heat and blend the contents (e.g. using a hand blender directly in the saucepan) Add the cumin, salt and black pepper If you want a creamier soup, stir in the cream - it's very tasty both with and without Taste the result and add more seasoning as desired Technorati Tags: pumpkin, soup 6:27:38 PM    comment []  trackback []