Saturday, April 24, 2010

Torturing Henry


I wish you were here with me in the kitchen right now.  I just took a pan of strawberry-orange scones out of the oven and it smells like a bakery.  Considering it's nasty and rainy outside (with the possibility of tornadoes tonight, oh great), my kitchen is the perfect place to spend the afternoon.  The aroma of those scones is making me pretty hungry.  Henry, too.

Problem is, we can't eat them!  Sorry, Henry.  After that gluttonous trip to St. Martin, it's mostly fiber and vegetables around here these days.  No wine, either.  Crap.

But you can make (and eat) these.  Besides, it's a great way to use up some of that buttermilk you have on hand now that you've made your very own lovely butter (which will be fantastic on the scones, by the way). 

The basic recipe is one we used at Star Provisions which I have tweaked with the addition of buttermilk and a little extra flour.  It makes a lot of scones (I got 22 out of the recipe) which is wonderful news because you can freeze them unbaked and then just pop one or two in the oven whenever you need them.  That's right, they can go straight from freezer to oven.  Of course in my house, that's downright dangerous.

If you didn't get around to making butter like I told you to, of course you can use store-bought buttermilk.  I'll tell you though, the homemade stuff lends an extra-buttery taste to the dough!




BUTTERMILK SCONES

5 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour
1 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 pound cold butter, diced
2 eggs (I used extra-large)
1 cup buttermilk (preferably homemade)
2 cups diced strawberries
Zest from 2 oranges
1 teaspoon orange extract
Additional flour

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in bowl of electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment.  Combine briefly on low speed.  Add butter and pulse on and off on very low speed until just combined.  When mixture is stable and no longer flying out of the bowl, mix on low speed until just crumbly and butter is the size of peas, about 2 minutes.  Add eggs and blend.  With mixer on low speed, slowly pour in buttermilk and mix until a soft dough forms.  Remove bowl from mixer stand.

Combine diced strawberries, orange zest and orange extract in a small bowl.  Toss with 2 tablespoons of flour.  Using a spatula, gently fold into dough.

Turn dough out on a well-floured surface.  It will be sticky.  If  too sticky to work with, add additional flour and knead briefly until dough comes together.

Roll out into a 3/4-inch thick rectangle.  Flour top of dough and knife.  Cut dough into 3 1/2 by 3 1/2-inch squares then cut each square diagonally into triangles.  Remove to a sheet pan and continue with remaining dough, re-rolling one time.

Place baking sheet in freezer.  When scones are frozen, wrap well and store until needed.  If baking immediately, it is best to chill them first, at least one hour.  Preheat oven to 350-degrees then bake on a sheet lined with parchment paper or a Silpat for 40 minutes or until golden.  Cool on a rack.

Yield:  22 triangular scones (of course, you can cut them into any shape/size you like)

These are perfectly wonderful as is, but I like to take them over the top by either brushing them with egg wash (beat an egg with some water, milk or half-and-half) and sprinkling generously with sugar (preferably turbinado) before baking or glazing them when they come out of the oven.

ORANGE GLAZE (this makes enough for the entire batch of 22 - make less if you are baking off fewer scones)

3 cups confectioner's sugar
Juice of two large oranges
1/2 teaspoon orange extract

Combine all ingredients in a medium bowl and whisk well until no lumps remain.  Glaze should be fairly thin and pourable.

Brush over slightly cooled scones.  Yum!

Notes:
Many recipes will tell you to bake scones at 425-degrees or higher, the idea being to create a beautiful outside crust.  I agree with the concept but that has never worked for me in a home kitchen because the outside gets done, but the inside does not.  I find that a longer baking at 350 does the trick in my oven.  You may need to experiment with yours.

I used strawberries because that's what I happened to have on hand.  But you can take the basic recipe and add anything you can think of - like maybe blueberries and lemon zest, dried cranberries and crystallized ginger, dried apricots and toasted almonds - well, you get the idea.  Heck, why not chocolate chips and orange zest?  A little chocolate for breakfast never hurt anyone.  Have at it!

Oh, and I suffer for my art.  I broke the diet and tasted one of the scones before I posted this.  Since I altered the basic recipe, I figured it was only reasonable to taste the result before I posted it.  You can feel guilty now!

Cooking with Fresh Lemon Juice: Food Tip of the Day - Saturday, April 24th, 2010

There are a great many instances, in all styles and types of cooking, where the recipe calls for - or we are required to use - fresh lemon juice. Yes, we can buy lemon juice bottled, or we can buy a whole lemon each time when we may only need to use a quarter of it or even less. There is, however, a third alternative, which makes cooking with fresh lemon juice both extremely economical and practical.

Chopping up a lemon and freezing it in a tupperware container means that we will always have, ready to hand, a supply of truly fresh lemon juice. We can either defrost what we require in advance, or simply add a piece or more of the frozen lemon to a boiling solution. Whatever the recipe demands, the process is incredibly straightforward.

There is even an additional benefit of storing fresh lemon - or lime, or orange - in this fashion. How many times do we add a slice of citrus fruit to an alcoholic drink? Fairly regularly, dependant naturally upon the type of drink. Unfortunately, what we also tend to do is add ice, which melts and dilutes the taste and alcoholic content of the drink. By adding a piece or slice of frozen fruit to the drink, we essentially kill two birds with one stone. The cold fruit chills the drink and as it melts, it affords us the additional flavour we require, without watering down our drink!

What are you waiting for? Get some lemons and limes chopped up and in to your deep freeze today!

A tale of the mouse...

I despise mice! I can't stand the sight of them, let alone one in the house. We have been in this house for and year and a half and have not had a mouse problem yet, until this week.

I think the mouse must have known that David was gone at work and I was the only one home, so he timed his entry accordingly. I was sitting on the couch in the living room with the cat on my lap. She got up from my lap for just a few minutes before I heard a huge banging and clattering coming from the kitchen. It had the cat written all over it. So I got up to walk around to the kitchen, thinking she had gotten onto the counter and knocked something over. To my horror, when I turned the corner around the couch, there was the mouse running for it's short little life across my kitchen floor with the cat in hot pursuit.

The next part is kind of girly. I of course screamed as loud as I could and ran for the front door. The poor dogs outside heard me screaming and start running around the yard barking ready to protect whoever was screaming. Once I got outside, I also realized that our neighbor was in his driveway and had probably heard my blood curdling screams. I didn't dare go back in that house, so I watched helplessly as the cat killed the mouse and continued to play with it all around the downstairs.

Thankfully I had remembered to grab my phone amidst all the screaming and running so I called my mother-in law. She is a lover of all animals, including mice, so I waited outside for 45 minutes until she came over and rescued me from the mouse.

And of course, everyone enjoyed teasing me about it the rest of the night!